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When he winds down the invisible staircase 
of the winds " 



STORIES FROM 
NORTHERN TRAILS 



BY 

WILLIAM J. LONG 



WOOD FOLK SERIES 
BOOK VII 



GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
I wo Cooies deceives 

JUL 14 1S08 

w0mr<if"> entry 

CLASS A XXc. Wu- 

COPY 8. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



Copyright, 1905, igo8 
By WILLIAM J. LONG 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



48.6 



gEfre atdengum jlrggg 

GINN & COMPANY ■ PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

The reader who follows these trails will find them leading into 
a new country, a land of space and silence where it is good to 
be, away up among the mountains and woods and salmon rivers 
and mossy barren grounds of Labrador and Newfoundland. 
There he will find himself face to face with new animals — 
white wolf, fisher, salmon, wild goose, polar bear, and a score of 
others big and little — that stop their silent hunting to look at 
the intruder curiously and without fear. In his turn he will lay 
aside his gun and his thoughts of killing for a moment, and 
watch these animals with his heart as well as his eyes wide open, 
trying to see without prejudice just what things they are doing, 
and then to understand if possible why and how they do them : 
why, for instance, the big Arctic wolf spares the bull caribou that 
attacks him wantonly ; why the wild goose has no fear at home ; 
why the baby seals are white at birth ; how the salmon climb 
the falls which they cannot jump, and why they hasten back to 
the sea when they are hurt ; how the whale speaks without a 
voice ; and what makes the fisher confuse his trail, or leave beside 
it a tempting bait for you when you are following him, — all 
these and twenty more curious things are waiting to be seen and 
understood at the end of the trail. 

The reader who has not followed such trails before will ask at 
once, How many of these things are true ? Every smallest inci- 
dent recorded here is as true as careful and accurate observation 
can make it. In most of the following chapters, as in all previous 



vi Northern Trails. Book II 

volumes, will be found the direct results of my own experience 
among animals ; and in the few cases where, as stated plainly in 
the text, I have used the experience of other and wiser men, I 
have taken the facts from first-hand and accurate observers, and 
have then sifted them carefully so as to retain only those that 
are in my own mind without a question as to their truth. In 
the long story of Wayeeses the White Wolf, for example, — in 
which for the greater interest I have put the separate facts 
into a more or less connected biography, — every incident in 
this wolf's life, from his grasshopper hunting to the cunning 
caribou chase, and from the den in the rocks to the meeting 
of wolf and children on the storm-swept barrens, is minutely 
true to fact, and is based squarely upon my own observation and 
that of my Indians. 

In one case only, the story of Kopseep the Salmon, have I 
ventured to make an exception to this rule of absolute accuracy. 
For years I have followed and watched the salmon from the sea 
to the headsprings of his own river and back again to the sea, 
and all that part of his story is entirely true to fact ; but beyond 
the breakers and beneath the tide no man has ever followed or 
seen him. I was obliged, therefore, either to omit that part of 
his life or to picture it as best I could from imagination and the 
records of the salmon hatcheries and deep-sea trawlers. I chose, 
for the story's sake, the latter course, and this part of the record 
has little value beyond a purely literary one. It is a guess at 
probable truth, and not, like the rest of the book, a record of 
careful observation. 

If the reader find himself often wondering at the courage or 
gentleness or intelligence of these free folk of the wilderness, 
that need not trouble or puzzle him for an instant. He is not 
giving human traits to the beasts, but is simply finding, as all do 



Preface vii 

find who watch animals closely, many things which awaken a 
sympathetic response in his own heart, and which he under- 
stands, more or less clearly, in precisely the same way that he 
understands himself and his own children. 

It is not choice, but necessity, which leads us to this way of 
looking at animals and of trying to understand them. If we had 
a developed animal psychology based upon the assumption that 
life in one creature is essentially different from life in another, 
and that the intelligence in a wolf's head, for instance, is of a 
radically different kind from the same intelligence in the head of 
some other animal with two legs instead of four, then we might 
use our knowledge to understand what we see upon these trails. 
But there is no such psychology, and the assumption itself is a 
groundless one. Nature is of one piece, and consistent through- 
out. The drop is like the ocean, though it bears no ships on its 
bosom ; the tear on a child's cheek breaks the light into glorious 
color, as does the rainbow on the spray of Niagara ; and the law 
that holds the mountains fast sleeps in the heart of every grain 
of sand on the seashore. When we wish to measure the inter- 
stellar spaces we seek no new celestial unit, but apply confidently 
our own yardstick ; and the chemistry that analyzes a baby's 
food serves equally well for the satellites of Jupiter. This is but 
an analogy, to be sure, but it serves to guide us in the realm of 
conscious life, which also seems of one piece and under one law. 
Inspired writers of every age have sought to comprehend even 
gods and angels by the same human intelligence that they ap- 
plied to the ants and the conies, and for the same reason, — that 
they possessed but one measure of life. Love and hate, fear and 
courage, joy and grief, pain and pleasure, want and satisfaction, 
— these things, which make so large a part of life, are found in 
animals as well as in men, differing much in degree but not at all 



viii Northern Trails. Book II 

in kind from the same feelings in our own hearts ; and we must 
measure them, if we are to understand them at all, by a common 
standard. To call a thing intelligence in one creature and reflex 
action in another, or to speak of the same thing as love or kind- 
ness in one and blind impulse in the other, is to be blinder our- 
selves than the impulse which is supposed to govern animals. 
Until, therefore, we have some new chemistry that will ignore 
atoms and atomic law, and some new psychology that ignores 
animal intelligence altogether, or regards it as under a radically 
different law from our own, we must apply what we know of 
ourselves and our own motives to the smaller and weaker lives 
that are in some distant way akin to our own. 

To cover our own blindness and lack of observation we often 
make a mystery and hocus-pocus of animal life by using the 
word instinct to cover it all ; as if instinct were the mysterious 
and exclusive possession of the animals, and not a common her- 
itage which we share with them in large measure. It is an un- 
meaning word at best ; for. no one has told us, except in the 
vaguest way, what instinct is, or has set the limit where instinct 
ends and conscious intelligence begins, or has shown how far the 
primary instincts of a child differ from those of any other ani- 
mal. On the other hand, one who watches animals closely and 
sympathetically must judge from what he sees that the motives 
which govern an animal's action are often very much like our 
own, the difference being that the animal's motive is more simple 
and natural than ours, and that among the higher orders the 
greater part of an animal's life — playing, working, seeking food, 
making dens, outwitting other animals, avoiding traps and ene- 
mies — is directed not by a blind instinct but by a very wide- 
awake intelligence. And this intelligence begins by the use of 
native powers and is strengthened by their daily occupation ; is 



Preface ix 

encouraged and developed by the mother's training and example 
as she leads her little ones into the world, and is perfected by 
the animal's own experience, which he remembers in the face of 
new problems — precisely as we do. A wild animal's life may 
indeed be far below ours, but he lives much in that pleasant 
border-land between thought and feeling where we so often find 
ourselves in our quiet moments, and there is no earthly need to 
make a mystery of him by talking vaguely of instinct, since so 
much of his life corresponds to our own and becomes intelligible 
to us the moment we lay aside our prejudice or hostility and 
watch him with a patient and friendly interest. 

I make no claim whatever that animals reason or think or feel 
as men and women do. I have watched them too long for that ; 
and sitting beside the beaver's village in the still twilight of the 
wilderness I find enough to occupy eyes and mind without mak- 
ing any comparison with the unquiet cities of men far away. 
But here before me is a life to be understood before it can be 
described, — a life, not an automaton, with its own joys and fears, 
its own problems, and its own intelligence ; and the only con- 
ceivable way for me to understand it is to put myself for a 
moment in its place and lay upon it the measure of the only life 
of which I have any direct knowledge or understanding, which 
is my own. And this, far from being visionary or hypersensi- 
tive, as the makers of mechanical natural history would have us 
believe, is the only rational, indeed the only possible, way of 
understanding any animal action. 

So, whether one looks for the facts of animal life or for the 
motives which govern it, the reader may follow these trails, as I 
first followed them, with the idea of seeing with his own eyes 
and understanding with his own heart. He will see many things 
that he does not understand, and so will listen with respect to 



x Northern Trails. Book II 

Noel and Old Tomah, who for fifty seasons and more have lived 
close to the Wood Folk. And he will find at the end of every 
trail a real animal, as true to life as I am able to see and describe 
it after many years of watching in the wilderness. 

WILLIAM J. LONG 

Stamford, Connecticut 
January, 1905 



CONTENTS 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 

Pequam the Fisher 

The Trail of the Cunning One 

Out of the Deeps . 

Matwock of the Icebergs 

Where the Salmon jump 

The Story of Kopseep 

Glossary of Indian Names 



Pace 

I 

33 
5i 
73 
9i 
105 
125 

157 



xi 



FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 

Pace 
'Down the Spiral Staircase of the Winds" . . . Frontispiece 

He rushed straight at me" 20 

He had picked up the Trail and darted away" . . . .38 

Rouses Pequam's Temper " 66 

A Long Snaky Body leaped clear of the Water " . . .86 

A Salmon springs out" 114 

AS IF IT WERE HIS OWN SHADOW THAT HE WAS TRYING TO ESCAPE" \\2 




IN QUESTf OfjmCTONR 
THfrWlLD 



JT 




rrjg VAST and lonely barren, covered deep 
J with soft-colored mosses and sur- 
rounded by gloomy spruce woods, lies basking 
in the early morning sunshine. The first sea- 
wind has just come to call it, swinging a 
fragrant censer over the earth and rolling up 
the mists that have covered it all night long. 
Under this fleecy, vanishing coverlet the plain 
seems to stir and breathe deep of the morning 
incense and then stretch itself drowsily, like a 
gray wolf just awake. Here and there little 
ponds or flashets of shallow water blink and || 
quiver in the light like sleepy eyes, or rest in 
soft winding shadows like the features and - 
wrinkles of a great weather-beaten face. Silence broods 
over it, taking visible shape in the form of a solitary 

3 



rs-wt 




4 Northern Trails. Book II 

woods raven that hangs motionless high in air on 
sable outstretched wings. No sign of life moves on the 
tranquil face of the earth or water; no sound breaks 
the restful stillness save the cheeping of young plover 
hiding in the gray moss, and a low surge, like a sound 
in a dream, drifting in over distant woods from where 
the waves break ranks on the unnamed shoals. And 
here — unexpectedly, as good things come at last — was 
the end of my long quest to find the home of Waptonk 
the wild goose. 

Ever since childhood I had sought him. In the spring 
he had always called to me from the high heavens; and 
something in the ring of his bugle-call, something in the 
sight of that living arrow-head driving steadily north- 
ward, and something perhaps in his wild heart which 
found answer in the heart of a boy who had to stay on 
the farm while his soul was away to the wilderness, — 
all these sights and sounds and unknown longings had 
bound me to the trail of Waptonk the Wild, and made 
me resolve some day to follow him and find out what it 
was that called him northward when brooks were free 
and big woods budding and the spring impulse was in 
the heart of all living things. 

Later Waptonk had called to me again from the same 
heavens ; but now the arrow-head pointed southward, 
and the flight was altogether different. The lines of the 
wedge wavered and were often broken ; it held closer 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 5 

to earth and was less certain in its magnificent onward 
rush ; and the clear full-throated bugle-calls that had 
thrilled the boy's heart with their springtime clangor 
gave place to a curious communicative chatter, in which 
almost every note rose at the end to a falsetto. Now 
and then a strong, clear note, deeper and more peremp- 
tory, would sound at the head of the wedge, and in- 
stantly the wings would cackle an answer and swing 
into better line ; but the cry had lost much of its joy 
and utter freedom, as the flight had lost its power and 
swift certainty. 

I did not know then, in the autumn days, that these 
were mostly young birds which had never before fol- 
lowed the long trail ; that at the head of every wedge 
was one of the old birds, pointing out the headlands by 
which they shaped their course ; that the flight was less 
certain because the goslings had not yet reached their 
full power and must rest by the w 7 ay; and that the cry 
was less stirring because spring no longer called them 
away by its throbbing love life and by the sweet home 
memories of quiet nesting places in the far Northland. 
Rather were they driven away from the things they 
loved ; and now the security of the great, free, lonely 
wilderness must give place to constant watchfulness 
in a hostile land, where danger lurked and roared out 
upon them from every point and bay and feeding- 
ground. No winder the flight wavered ; no wonder 



6 Northern Trails. Book II 

the young voices rose to falsetto in amazement at the 
change from the quiet little pond, which had been all 
their world, to the vast panorama of seas and moun- 
tains and cities of men spread wide beneath their wings. 
Then in the autumn days the boy, like all the rest 
of the male population in whom something of the old 
savage lingered under its coat of civilization, felt the 
hunter stir within him, and saw visions and dreamed 
dreams when the wild-goose call from the heavens 
came down to him as a kind of a challenge. When the 
weather was stormy and the flight was low, the boy 
would climb stealthily out of the rear window of the 
barn with the forbidden old musket close to his breast. 
Keeping the barn between his own line of flight and 
the kitchen windows, he would head across the brown 
fields to the woods, holding steadily and swiftly on his 
way to the little Widow Dunkle's, who kept an old gray 
goose. Sometimes he begged, sometimes he bribed, and 
sometimes, when flight was irresistible and the widow 
away from home, he simply appropriated what he wanted 
with all his heart. There would be a rush among the 
fowls, squawking and quacking of hens and ducks, and 
one wild clarion yell from the old graylag goose as she 
found herself in chancery. Then the boy would scoot 
and dodge away to the big pond in the woods, with 
the old musket at trail and the old gray goose gripped 
tight under his elbow, konk-konking her resentment, 



In ^uest ofWaptonk the Wild 7 

but sensible enough, as all geese are when you take 
them right. 

.Next scene in the little comedy, — a boy hidden in 
the grass and bushes of a lonely point, scanning the 
heavens as if at any moment they might open and let 
wonders fall ; and in front of him an old gray goose, 
with one foot anchored to a brick, swimming about 
and tip-tilting her tail to the skies as she splashed and 
probed the bottom for roots, gabbling to herself like a 
whole flock of geese in her wonder *and delight at her 
strange surroundings. And when at last the wild geese 
came, and out of the sky came tumbling down the stir- 
ring clangor, how the centuries of domestic servitude 
fell away from the old graylag like a useless garment ! 
Tugging at the stupid brick, with outstretched neck 
and quivering wings she recognized her own people and 
sent up a wild cry to call them down to share her lone- 
liness — perhaps, who knows ? to come and take her 
away with them. Then the boy, hugging himself and 
holding his breath and loving the old goose supremely 
for her help, would lie still as a stone, only his eyes 
moving to follow the flight of the wild birds and see 
if they would come down to his bidding. 

Generally the wedge kept steadily on, straight and 
true to its course; but every head was bent to bugle 
down an answer to the captive. Then the boy's heart 
was touched in turning away from the high flight to 



8 Northern Trails. Book II 

watch his old graylag. Beating her useless wings, strug- 
gling after her kindred as far as the anchor string would 
allow, she would call and call, and all the wildness of 
the lonely Northland was in her appealing summons. 
Long after the clangor had died away to a faint crackle 
and vanished in immeasurable distance, she would sit 
listening with neck upstretched, hearing, and in her 
heart answering, the call which had died away on the 
boy's less sympathetic ears. 

After that there was no more joyous gabbling from 
Graylag. She would swim about silently, now pecking 
angrily at the restraining string, now raising her head 
to look and listen for her wild kindred, till twilight fell 
sadly on the pond and she would go home mute and 
passive under the boy's arm again. 

One stormy day great luck headed towards the boy 
and made his heart jump at the thought of at last 
meeting the gray wanderers of the upper air that had 
so often set his heart a-longing. A great gang of wild 
geese, flying lower than usual, with the sides of their 
wedge broken by the sleet, and irregular from, weariness, 
passed near the pond on their southern migration. 
Their faint, confused honking roused all the wild long- 
ing in the heart of Old Graylag. Something too in 
their call, which she seemed to understand, made her 
sure they would come this time, and that she would 
know at last what the longing in her old heart meant. 



In ^uest of Waptonk the Wild 9 

As she raised herself on her poor wings and sent out 
her clamorous appeal, the wild leader stopped, and the 
long wedge seemed to tumble together in a dense mass 
of cackle and confusion. Then the leader whirled ; 
above the clamor came the deep honk of authority ; 
the lines formed swiftly, with marvelous precision, and 
straight up the pond to the boy's hiding-place they 
came, a glorious big wedge of birds, honking, honking 
in joy at so good a resting-place, and nearly taking the 
heart out of Old Graylag as she clamored and tugged 
at her anchor and beat the water with her wings. 

Then, all by himself, the boy saw a bit of Waptonk's 
drill school which old goose hunters on the coast have 
looked for many years in vain. High overhead they 
came till over the middle of the pond, when the leader 
whirled sharply to the right. The right-hand side of 
the wedge whirled after him, while the left wing halted 
and then turned in behind the leaders in a single long 
line. Every wing was now set stiffly; the clangor 
suddenly ceased, and down they came, round and 
around in a beautiful spiral, as if sliding down on an 
invisible winding staircase. Following the big leader 
came the long, magnificent line, which swung in a 
complete curve above him and half around the circle 
again ; all with set wings and outstretched necks, glid- 
ing, wheeling, curving steadily downward in perfect 
order and perfect silence. 



io Northern Trails. Book II 

It was marvelous, the grace, the precision, the im- 
pressive silence of the stately procession down the 
spiral staircase of the winds, and the boy forgot the 
hunter in his intense wonder and admiration. One by 
one the great birds dropped their black webbed feet 
and slid gently along just over the surface for a brief 
moment, and then dropped with a quiet, restful splash 
into the water. An instant later they had swung to- 
gether and a low, eager chatter began among them. 

Now Old Graylag alone had been unimpressed by 
the wonderful descent, for other things were stirring 
wildly in her lonely heart. All the while they were 
coming down, so silent and stately, she kept up an 
hysterical cackle, with a wild beating of pinions and a 
frantic tugging at the anchor as she strove mightily to 
join her kindred. As they swung together with necks 
up suspiciously — for no wild water-fowl likes any wel- 
come or demonstration beyond the universal uplifting of 
wings — she ceased her wild struggle and called softly. 
Instantly the leader answered and the whole flock drew 
in steadily towards the shore. 

Behind the rough screen of grass and bushes the 
boy's heart began to beat loudly as he clutched his long 
musket. The hunter was wide-awake again, and here 
were the geese — great splendid birds that never before 
were nearer than the heavens — almost within gunshot, 
drawing steadily nearer and calling as they came on. 



In truest of Waptonk the Wild 1 1 

In front of him the old gray goose, full of a nameless 
excitement, jabbered back at the flock and swung rapidly 
in small circles about her anchor. Her excitement 
increased; the flock halted, wavered, veered aside; then 
the heart of the old goose went after them in a wild 
honk ! with a break in it like the fall of a tin pan. A 
tug, a plunge, a flurry of wings ; the anchor string 
snapped and away she went, half flying, half running 
over the water, and plunged in among the wild birds in 
a smother of spray. In an instant she was swallowed 
up in a dense circle of gray backs and slender black 
necks with white cheek patches, and the whole flock 
drew swiftly away into open water, cackling and jabber- 
ing softly, with the nasal konk-a-konk of Old Graylag 
sounding incessantly above the hushed chatter of her 
wild kindred. 

Late that day, after waiting long, cold hours in the 
vain hope that they would come near my hiding-place, 
I pushed out sadly in a leaky old tub of a boat to catch 
the Widow Dunkle's goose. The flock took alarm while 
I was yet far away ; slanted heavily up-wind to the tree- 
tops, where with much calling and answering the young 
birds fell into line, and the wedge bore away swiftly 
seaward. After them went Old Graylag heartbroken, 
beating her heavy way over the water, calling and calling 
again to the flock that had now become only a confused 
tangle of wild voices over the tree-tops. Straight to the 



12 Northern Trails. Book II 

shore she went, and across a little wild meadow, still 
following the flock. When I caught her she was wad- 
dling bravely through the woods, stopping anon to call 
and listen ; but she made no resistance when I tucked 
her under my elbow and carried her home and slipped 
her, unobserved in the darkness, into her accustomed 
place in the Widow Dunkle's duck coop. 

That was the nearest I ever came, in boyhood days, 
to a close acquaintance with Waptonk the Wild; but 
always in the fall his voice roused the hunter as no other 
sound ever did ; and always in the spring his clanging 
jubilate aroused the longing in the boy's heart to follow 
after him and find out what it was in the wild, lonely 
North that called him. Later, as a hunter, I grew 
acquainted with many of his winter ways, watched him 
feeding on the shoals or standing for sleep on the lonely 
sand bars, and thrilled to the rustling sweep of his broad 
wings as he swung in over my decoys. 

The trained geese which were often used — descend- 
ants of sundry wing-tipped or wounded birds that had 
been saved to breed in captivity — were very different 
from Old Graylag. When the honk of wild geese was 
heard and the long wedge wavered over the pond, these 
trained birds would be loosed to circle far out from 
shore and with wild clamor call down their wilder kins- 
folk. Then slowly, cautiously, as if they knew well the 
treacherous work they were doing, they would lead the 



In ^uest of Waptonk the Wild 13 

wild birds in towards the blind till within range of the 
hidden gunners, when they would scatter suddenly and 
rush aside to get out of the way; and the decoyed and 
wondering geese would be left open to the murderous 
fire of the concealed hunters. An evil work, it seemed 
to me, in which I am glad to remember I took no part 
beyond that of watching with intense interest, and won- 
dering at the cunning patience with which the old pot- 
hunter had trained his wild confederates. 

Watching these trained decoys one day, it was hard 
to realize that the birds were but yesterday the wildest 
and wariest of all the feathered folk. Then the startling 
paradox occurred to me that the very wildest of the 
creatures are the easiest to tame by man and the quick- 
est to adopt his ways. The sparrows that live about 
our houses all their days have little fear of men ; but at 
the first attempt to catch them they are suspicious for 
life, and to domesticate them would be an impossibility. 
So with the ruffed grouse, a very tame bird in his native 
wilderness, that barely moves aside to let men pass ; yet 
all attempts to domesticate him or to make him content 
with safe quarters and abundant fare have been, with 
a few rare exceptions, unaccountable failures. He lets 
you come near and watch him readily enough ; but the 
moment you put him in your coop the very spirit of 
wildness takes possession of him, and he dies in the 
attempt to regain his freedom. 



14 Northern Trails. Book II 

The wild goose, on the other hand, the wariest and 
wildest of birds when he comes among us in his migra- 
tions, giving wide berth to everything that has the least 
semblance to man or man's invention, and never letting 
you get within rifle-shot if his wary sentinels can detect 
your approach, will feed from your hand after he has 
been a few hours in your coop; and his descendants 
will take a permanent and contented place in your barn- 
yard. In the spring, when the migratory fever stirs 
within him, he will answer the clarion call of his fellows 
in the sky and spread wide his wings to join them ; but 
that passes speedily, and he turns back to your dooryard 
and seems content even with the clipped wing which 
keeps him there while his brothers and kinsfolk fade 
away in the cold blue distance. Cases have been known 
in which a wounded goose, having been kept all winter, 
has flown away with a passing flock into the unknown 
North during the spring migration, and returned the next 
fall to the same barn-yard, bringing her brood with her. 
And so with the turkeys that range our fields; they are 
descendants of birds that but yesterday were ranging the 
woods as wild and unapproachable as wilderness ravens. 

The first great lesson I learned in the years of fol- 
lowing the wild goose as a hunter was one of tremen- 
dous respect for his wariness and intelligence. To call 
a person a goose would be an exaggerated compliment, 
or a bit of pure flattery, if one but understood what he 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 1 5 

was saying. Wherever he feeds in the open, Waptonk 
has his sentinels posted on the highest point of observa- 
tion — wise old birds that know their business — and it 
is next to impossible to approach a flock without being 
detected. Once it was enough to lead a cow slowly 
towards where the birds were feeding on the stubble 
and keep yourself hidden on the farther side of the 
grazing animal ; but now Waptonk looks keenly under 
every cow to see if she have an extra pair of legs or 
no, and so other devices must be invented, only to be 
quickly fathomed by Waptonk's nimble wit, and then 
cast aside with the others as useless things. On the 
coast he still listens to the voice of his kind and comes 
to the trained decoys ; and on the prairies a deep pit 
with wounded birds tied to stakes all about it and 
honking to their fellows will sometimes bring him near 
enough for a quick shot. But these unfair advantages 
are in themselves a confession of man's failure ; since 
by his own wit and aided by modern firearms he is no 
longer able to contend with the wit of a goose. 

Elsewhere, especially in the great wheat-fields of the 
Southwest, there is a humorous confession of man's im- 
potence and Waptonk's superiority in the queer "goose 
cavalry," — horsemen that go shooting and shouting 
about to frighten away from the growing wheat the 
thronging thousands of wild geese that cannot be cir- 
cumvented or destroyed. And the most ridiculous thing 



1 6 Northern Trails. Book II 

in the whole proceeding is that the goose cavalryman 
must fume and fret under the thought that the exas- 
perating birds understand him perfectly. They feed and 
gabble away serenely, paying no more serious heed to 
him than to any other scarecrow, until just before he 
gallops up, or foolishly tries to creep within range be- 
hind his horse, when the sentinel gives the alarm and 
the whole flock takes wing and settles down comfort- 
ably to feed in another part of the same wheat-field. 

All this is the more remarkable in view of the fact 
that this marvelous shrewdness with which Waptonk 
evades the best inventions of men, far from being a 
matter of instinct, is imparted to him on the spot by his 
wise old leaders. For untold generations he has been 
born and bred in the waste places of the North, where 
he sees no man and where his life is singularly care-free 
and fearless. When he starts southward for the first 
time, full-grown and strong of wing, he knows absolutely 
nothing of the world of men. Left to himself and his 
own instincts he would speedily tumble into the first 
cunning pitfall, as his ancestors did when they met for 
the first time the white man and his devices. Then old 
and young alike had little fear of man, — as they have 
little now in their wild northern home, — and met him 
with only the ordinary wild creature's watchfulness ; but 
in a few seasons they learned better, and now the chief 
concern of the old birds on the southern migration is to 



In Quest ofWaptonk the Wild 17 

keep the young well away from things that are danger- 
ous. Fortunately for the young goose, his parents always 
lead the flock of which he is a part ; and from them and 
from the old leaders, trained in the school of long expe- 
rience, he speedily learns to shift for himself and to 
make his own way in a world of wits. 

All these and many more things the boy learned as 
he followed Waptonk with the hunters ; but still his 
chief question remained unanswered. From books and 
baymen alike, from explorers and the shrewd old pot- 
hunter of the Middleboro' ponds, he heard always the 
same story: how the honking wedge might be called 
down to decoys, and how the wary birds might be tolled 
or trapped or outwitted and killed ; but what Waptonk 
was as a living creature, what thoughts were in his head 
and what feelings in his heart when he was far from 
men, in his own home where he could be himself, — that 
problem nobody answered. Something to be killed, 
rather than a living thing to be known and understood, 
was what met the boy at every turn and hushed his 
questions. And always in the spring, when the wild 
call of the wide voyagers floated down from the blue 
heavens, and the boy's eyes followed eagerly the rush of 
the great living wedge sweeping northward to love and 
liberty, something new and strange, yet familiar as the 
spring or the sunrise, stirred and awoke in the boy's 
heart and made him long to follow. 



1 8 Northern Trails. Book II 

That is no strange experience, I think. Something 
stirs in the hearts of most men, and sweeps the years 
away and makes them boys again, with the impulse to 
wander and to do splendid things far away, when the 
first jubilant trumpet clangor of the wild goose comes 
down to them in the spring twilight. 

It was no surprise, therefore, but only the fulfilment 
of many years of quiet expectancy, when I crept out of 
the low spruces away up in the northern peninsula of 
Newfoundland, and found the end of my long quest. A 
subdued chatter of wild voices had called to me softly 
above the steady murmur of the river as I stole through 
the woods to the salmon pool in the early June morn- 
ing. Following the sounds, which seemed very near at 
first, but which faded away like a will-o'-the-wisp when 
I tried to find them, they led me away from the river 
and out of the big woods to where an unknown barren 
lay just awake under the sunrise, greeting the intruder 
with the silent, questioning look of the wilderness. And 
there, close at hand in a little flashet, was Waptonk the 
Wild, waiting quietly as if he had always expected me. 

Still and secret as my approach had been, with that 
curious unconscious effort to efface himself that marks 
the going of a man or an animal alone in the great 
wilderness, Waptonk had been watching me for some 
moments before I saw him. He was resting quietly in 
the middle of the flashet, a splendid big gander, with 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 19 

soft gray body that almost lost its outlines against the 
gray shore, and glossy black neck standing straight up 
from the water, and a pure white cravat rising on either 
side to his cheeks, like the immaculate " choker " of the 
old-fashioned New England minister. All the w T ildness 
and wariness seemed to have fallen away from him, as 
a man drops a useless garment when he enters his own 
home. He looked at me steadily, quietly, without fear; 
with a certain sense of dignity in every strong, graceful 
line of his body, and with an unmistakable sense of his 
responsibility in guarding that which was hidden away 
somewhere on the farther shore. My first wondering 
impression was, Can this be the same bird that I have 
followed so long in vain, whose name, in the expression 
" a wild-goose chase," is a symbol for all that is hopeless 
and inapproachable ? There he sat, quiet, self-contained, 
without a tremor of fear or curiosity, and with no inten- 
tion, so far as my eyes could discover, either to approach 
or to fly away. 

I drew near quietly and sat down on the shore, while 
Waptonk swung easily back and forth on a short beat 
in front of me. As the minutes passed and I made no 
hostile sound or movement, the short patrol increased 
its swing till it covered an irregular half circle whose 
center was a point on the farther shore ; and I knew 
then where I should find his nest and gray mate. Pres- 
ently he began to talk, — a curious low gabble. Out of 



2cT Northern Trails. Book II 

the grass and moss on the point rose a head and long 
dark neck to look at me steadily. Near it were low 
cheepings and whistlings, where the goslings had been 
hiding in silence till the danger passed by. 

I rose at this, having found his secret, and made 
my way round the pond, with immense caution because 
of the quaking bogs and bottomless black mud that 
lurked under my feet at every step. Waptonk stopped 
his patrol to watch me a moment, then followed closely, 
keeping just abreast of me as I made my slow way along 
the treacherous shore. When I doubled the end of the 
little pond and drew near to where his nestlings were 
hidden, Waptonk turned to the shore and hurried to his 
mate ahead of me. A moment he stood over her reas- 
suringly, bending to intertwine his neck with hers and 
to rub his cheeks softly over her wings with a gesture 
that could mean only a caress. His head bent lower still 
to touch for an instant the goslings that were hiding 
in the moss; then he left them abruptly and rushed to 
where I was standing watching the amazing scene, and 
drew up defiantly, squarely across my path. 

An involuntary thrill of admiration ran over me as I 
looked down at him standing there so strong and con- 
fident, ready to defend his own. "You splendid fellow; 
you brave knight, if ever there was one among the 
feathered folk ! " I kept saying to myself. But I wanted 
to test him farther, and especially I wanted to see all 




v mt c 



He rushed straight 
at me " 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 21 

that was hidden in the gray moss ; so I started forward 
again cautiously. 

At the first step a lightning transformation swept 
over Waptonk. Big as he was, he ruffled all his feathers 
and half spread his great wings till he looked twice his 
own size, and formidable enough to scare any prowler. 
Another step; then his eyes flashed, and lowering his 
head and black neck close to the ground he rushed 
straight at me, hissing like forty snakes, and with a 
gasping, terrifying cackle in his throat, as if his rage 
were choking him. 

It was magnificent, this swift change from quiet dig- 
nity to raging defiance of an enemy ten times his size. 
The fierce hissing got into my nerves, spite of myself, 
and made me wonder if any wild animal, living con- 
stantly, as animals do, on the thin edge of flight and 
panic, could stand up against the terrifying sound for a 
moment. I remembered the time when, as a little boy, 
I had been soundly drubbed and beaten out of the barn- 
yard by an irate old gander, and watched now the great 
wings with a lively memory of what blows they could 
deal. Like a man caught in a fault, I had absolutely no 
defense ; for Waptonk was on his own ground, and I 
had no business whatever in meddling with his affairs. 
To throw myself upon him, therefore, and by brute 
force to overcome the noble fellow defending his little 
ones, was out of the question ; as plainly impossible as 



22 Northern Trails. Book II 

to rob a bird's nest or to beat a child. But suppose 
Noel, my big Indian, should chance that way on his 
perpetual quest for new beaver ground ? I could see 
the queer squint in his eye and the grin on his wrinkled 
face as he watched me hopping over the bogs, with the 
old gander nipping at my heels and spanking me with 
his broad wings as he chased me gloriously out of his 
bailiwick. That was too much, even for the sake of en- 
couraging Waptonk as he deserved ; so instead of run- 
ning away I sank down quietly in the moss, waiting half 
humorously to take my medicine and fully expecting to 
get it " good and plenty." 

Quite near me he stopped, his head down close to 
the ground, his tongue bent up like a spring into the 
roof of his mouth, hissing vigorously and watching me 
keenly out of his bright eyes to see the effect of his 
demonstration. It flashed upon me instantly why he 
bristled his feathers and raised his wings, while he car- 
ried his neck and head down close to the ground, like 
a big snake. The wings, his only weapons, were half 
raised for a blow; but the fierce-hissing yet harmless 
head would surely hold the attention of any attacking 
animal — just as an owl snaps his beak to frighten you 
and keep your eyes away from his dangerous claws 
until he gets them into you unexpectedly. Any wild 
animal, if he were brave enough to attack, would natu- 
rally avoid the snakelike hissing and leap over it for the 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 23 

larger body, only to be met by a stinging blow in the 
face from the powerful wings. If the delicate neck were 
carried high, any animal would naturally leap for it, and 
Waptonk's fight would be over almost before he could 
strike a blow. As it is, Waptonk carries his most vul- 
nerable point as close to the ground as possible, as a 
ship carries her magazine below the water-line, and by 
scaring an animal with his snakelike hiss he gets a fair 
chance to use his weapons, and so takes care of himself 
splendidly against all prowlers. 

Waptonk was evidently amazed at my quiet. Having 
expected either fight or flight, he was thrown off his 
balance and hardly knew how to meet the emergency. 
I fancied I could see it all in his eyes as he looked at 
me steadily. A moment or two he kept his defensive 
attitude, till the hissing gradually died away. He raised 
himself suddenly and threshed his great wings in my 
face. I could feel the strong wind of them on my 
cheek and measure the nervous muscular beat under 
his feathers as he tried their power. Then he put his 
head down to the ground and hissed again, daring me 
to come on. 

Ten yards behind him sat his mate, her head raised 
out of the grass, watching us steadily without a sound. 
Suddenly she uttered a low call with a curious accent 
of warning and reassurance. It was a communication to 
her champion, plainly enough, for he wavered slightly 



24 Northern Trails. Book II 

for the first time from his intense attitude. The next 
moment she slipped out of the grass into the pond, 
and after her came five goslings, alert little bundles 
of yellow-brown fuzz, that walked steadily across the 
shore, with a funny effect of carrying their knees up 
close to their shoulders, and glided easily into the 
friendly waters. There was another low call from the 
gray mate; then Waptonk, though he had not turned 
his head nor taken his keen eyes for an instant from 
my face, turned swiftly aside and threw himself into 
the water. A push or two from his powerful webs, and 
he was floating safely far beyond my reach, still looking 
back at me alertly over his shoulder as he surged away. 

The little family glided swiftly along the pond shore, 
the mother leading them and talking to them reassur- 
ingly. Between them and me hovered Waptonk, swing- 
ing back and forth on his watchful patrol, till they 
disappeared from sight; then he glided silently after 
them into a muddy lagoon where the treacherous bogs 
forbade any human foot to follow. 

An hour later the little wild family stole shyly out 
of the haven where they had hidden, and found me 
sitting quietly just where I had first appeared. If they 
were surprised or uneasy, they gave no sign of their 
feelings beyond a bright, inquisitive look, but swam 
slowly past me and climbed the bank where it was 
worn hard by their feet, and started across the barren 



In §>uest ofWaptonk the Wild 25 

on their day's foraging. For hours I followed them, 
keeping out of sight as much as possible, watching 
with keenest interest their feeding and discipline, and 
noting especially the crude beginnings of that wedge 
formation with which they would later make their first 
long flight southward ahead of the autumn gales. 

Wherever they went, Waptonk, the big gander, was 
near them, hovering on the outskirts, or watching over 
them keenly from every little hillock that commanded a 
wider view of the great barren. He ate but little, and 
apparently only incidentally. His whole business seemed 
to be to guard his little flock while the mother led them 
about to feed, or trained them to the perfect discipline 
that is the wonder of all those who have ever watched 
wild geese. And when at midday the feeding was done, 
and the goslings were sunning themselves on the bank 
of another flashet under the mother's eye, Waptonk 
took wing and bore away swiftly over the woods and 
marshes to the ocean ; as if in his cramped life he 
wanted room and exercise, or perhaps just a glimpse 
of the wide sea, which he loved, as all others do who 
have once felt the spell of its boundless mystery. For 
within the hour he was back again, as usual, standing 
guard over his own. 

Later, as I returned day after day to watch the gray 
voyagers that had so long attracted me, I saw a rare bit 
of Waptonk's care and sagacity. One of the goslings, 



26 Northern Trails. Book II 

more headstrong than the others, in wandering away 
from the leader over a treacherous bit of bog-land found 
himself stogged in some soft mud that he attempted to 
cross too hurriedly and carelessly. He floundered des- 
perately for a moment, called sharply, and then lay per- 
fectly quiet with wings extended on the mud to keep 
himself from sinking deeper. Instantly the mother bird 
called all the young close about her, raised her neck 
high to look over them at her helpless gosling, then 
turned her head and honked deeply to the gander. 
Waptonk had already seen the danger from his point 
of vantage and rose heavily in the air. Circling once 
with bent head over the little fellow in the mud, as if 
to understand the situation, he turned and flapped over 
him, reaching down to seize a wing in his bill. So, with 
the youngster kicking vigorously and flapping his free 
wing to help himself, he half dragged and half carried 
his careless offspring over the mud, and hiked him out 
upon the moss with a final unnecessary jerk that seemed 
to tell him roughly to take better care of himself another 
time. But he lowered his head to rub his cheek softly 
down the little fellow's neck and over his wings, again 
and again, before he walked quietly away to his post as 
if nothing whatever had happened. 

Then came the final scene, which made me tingle 
in my hiding, increasing the strong desire that rarely 
leaves me to understand what passes in the heads and 



In ^uest of Waptonk the Wild 27 

hearts of the Wood Folk. The mother went to the care- 
less one and brought him back to where the flock were 
waiting. Then standing in the midst of her brood she 
seemed to be talking to them, first in a low chatter, 
then in a strange silent communication, in which not a 
muscle moved, but in which every neck was raised in 
the attitude of tense attention. A moment later the 
flock was moving across the barren, cheeping, whistling, 
feeding as before. 

Late in the afternoon, as I watched by the home 
flashet, there was another scene altogether different ; 
and here were many things that a man could not be 
expected to understand, though I saw and admired them 
often enough. As the sun sank and the pointed shadows 
of the spruces came creeping out across the barren, the 
little flock came wandering back, as is the custom with 
wild geese, to spend the night by the nest where they 
were born, and to sleep contentedly under their mother's 
wings, while the old gander kept watch and ward in the 
darkness. For Waptonk is more of a land bird than any 
of the ducks. The forward set of his legs shows that 
Nature intended him to walk as well as swim ; and he 
will never sleep in the water if he can find a safe and 
quiet spot to rest on the shore. 

At sight of the familiar place the little family that I 
had watched all day long suddenly stopped their hungry 
wandering and came running in a close group, heads all 



28 Northern Trails. Book II 

up and whistling, to tumble down the slope and throw 
themselves with glad splashes into the friendly water, 
which was all aglow now with the splendors of the 
sunset. There they drank and washed themselves, and 
played together in little races and scurries, and stopped 
their play to stretch their necks down to the oozy bot- 
tom for roots that they had overlooked, or for earth and 
pebbles to aid their digestion. Then as the shadows 
lengthened they glided to an open spot on the bank 
to preen and gabble softly; while the big parent birds, 
their own preening finished as they watched the play 
of their little ones, went from one to another, rubbing 
them tenderly with their white cheeks, chattering over 
each one in turn, and in twenty little indescribable 
ways showing their fondness — their gladness also that 
the long good day was done and they were safe at 
home once more. 

Perhaps this was all imagination ; but, even so, a man 
must look in his heart, not in the psychologies or natu- 
ral histories, if he would understand half of what the 
Wood Folk are doing. Here before my eyes was a little 
family that had come back in the sunset, after much 
wandering and some clanger, to the one spot in the 
great wilderness that they knew well, where life began 
for the goslings, and where each familiar thing seemed 
to welcome them and make them feel at home. Over 
them stood the parents, strong and watchful against the 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 29 

world, but bending their necks tenderly to tell their 
little ones by the soft caress of their cheeks that they 
loved and understood them. A low, contented gabble 
filled the twilight stillness, unintelligible perhaps, yet 
telling plainly by its changing accents the goslings' 
changing feelings from the day's bright excitement to 
the evening's sleepy content, and recalling to me in 
a sudden wave of tenderness the chatter of a little 
child far away in the same twilight, who could speak 
no words as yet, but whose feelings I could understand 
perfectly as she talked back to the friendly universe 
and then crooned herself and her dolly to sleep, alone 
in her own little crib. A great tide of light rolled sud- 
denly over the plain from the west as the clouds lifted, 
bathing all things in a rosy splendor, and the young 
birds stopped their chatter to turn their heads and 
watch silently for a moment as the glory swept over 
them; and the voices were different, more hushed and 
sleepy, yet with a slight note of wonder, like birds 
wakened by a light, when I heard them again. In the 
nearest thickets a choir of thrushes were ringing the 
Angelus ; nearer a solitary vesper-sparrow, hidden in 
the gray moss, was singing his hymn to the evening; 
an unknown call floated down from the distant hills ; 
a fox barked in answer; while the river hushed its roar 
as the night fell and went singing down on its way to 
the sea. And to all these sounds, and to every wave of 



3<d Northern Trails. Book II 

light and passing shadow and restless wing of the eddy- 
ing plovers, the young birds responded instantly with 
low cheeps and whistles, drawing nearer and nearer 
together to feel a last touch of their parents' white 
cheeks; while I lay and watched them, myself drifting 
away into that delicious border-land of feeling and sense- 
impression in which the young birds live so constantly, 
where all conscious thought vanishes and one becomes 
alive in every nerve and finger-tip to the sights and 
sounds and subtle harmonies of the world. For Nature 
reveals not only herself, but some beautiful and forgotten 
part of a man's own soul, when she finds him responsive 
in the wilderness. 

Slowly the glory deepened and faded, and the crim- 
son flush that had spread wide over the great barren 
came creeping back into the west out of which it had 
come. After it came the silence, hushing the goslings' 
chatter and the birds' hymn ; and only the river was left 
singing to itself through the listening woods. Over the 
vast plain came again the sea-wind swinging its fragrant 
censer, from which fell now only heavy and drowsy 
odors ; and the fleecy mists that I had seen rise at dawn 
settled softly again to cover the sleeping earth like a 
garment. I could no longer see the birds that I had 
followed all the long, sunny day; but where the little 
family stood a soft gray shadow blurred the open shore ; 
and from it came now and then a sleepy, inquisitive 



In Quest of Waptonk the Wild 3 i 

peep as some little one stirred uneasily, and then a deep, 
quiet answer to tell him that all was well, and that he 
was not alone in the darkness. 

That was my first real meeting with Waptonk, my 
first answer to the question which had always been in 
my heart, and which neither the books nor the hunters 
could answer, as to what he was like in his own land, 
where the guns and decoys of men might not enter. 
And I was satisfied, perfectly satisfied, as I turned away 
in the twilight across the wild barren to where my little 
tent by the salmon river was waiting. 



TFDflll FHSEMIS 




33 




r 



PEQUAM the fisher, the Cunning One 
as Simmo calls him, who follows your LJ 
snow-shoe track but never crosses it, is one yh 
of the shadows of the big woods. A dark Ml 
shadow indeed to the Wood Folk, for wher- 4J 
ever he goes death follows close behind him ; 
and a shadow to your eyes also, for when you 
do see him, unexpectedly, after much watch- 
ing and patience, he darts up the hillside, 
leaping and dodging, vanishing and appear- / 
ing and vanishing again, like one of the 
shadows that the sunbeams are chasing when a brisk 
wind drives the clouds away and the woods are filled 
with rustlings and uncertainties. 

Why is he called the fisher? That is one of the 
mysteries. Ask the half-breeds of the great Barren 
Grounds, and they may tell you, perhaps, that he is 

35 



36 Northern Trails. Book II 

called fisher because he is a most industrious thief in 
stealing the fish with which they bait their traps, in 
angling them out of the cunning devices without get- 
ting his own paw caught or bringing the heavy deadfall 
down on his own back. The name Weejack, however, 
which still clings to him there, has no thought of fish 
or fishing in it, but suggests rather the elves and gob- 
lins, the cunning and mischievous Little Folk, that are 
supposed to haunt the solitudes and play havoc with 
the trapper's saple line. 

The earlier naturalists, catching rare glimpses of 
Pequam and trusting to their own knowledge rather 
than to the Indians' better understanding, probably 
called him fisher because they confused him with Kee- 
onekh the otter, whom he slightly resembles and who 
is a famous fisherman. Like all weasels — and next 
to Carcajou the wolverine he is greatest and fiercest 
of his tribe — he likes fish; but I have never known 
him to catch one unaided save once ; and then he 
leaped into a shallow pool among the rocks, where the 
receding waters had left a big salmon half stranded, 
and darted about like a fury in a blinding smother of 
water till he gripped his slippery prize securely and 
dragged him away into the shadows. 

Pequam has other names. Black Fox he is called 
in places where he is but rarely seen, though he bears 
no relation to the black or silver fox, and Pennant's 



Pequam the Fisher 37 

Marten by the bookish people, and Black Cat by all 
the Maine trappers, who follow him on the spring snows 
when he is gorged with food, and who catch him cun- 
ningly at last asleep in a hollow log — and that is the 
only way I have ever tried in which I have really caught 
a weasel asleep. But whatever his name, Pequam has 
the same nature wherever I have found or heard of 
him ; whether on the high mountain ranges, or the bleak 
Labrador barrens, or the silent shadow-filled northern 
woods, — a crafty, restless, bloodthirsty haunter of every 
trail, even of your own ; at once shy and daring, spring- 
ing in tense alarm at the slightest unknown squeak or 
chirp or rustle, yet with a screeching ferocity at times, 
when you corner him, that makes your spine tingle. 

Because he is little known, even to the naturalists, 
let me describe him just as you meet him at home in 
the woods. If you see him at all, which is not likely 
unless you follow him for miles- on the snow and find 
his kill and then track him to his den, you will be 
conscious chiefly of a black streak drawn swiftly up 
the hillside and vanishing over the top of a rock or a 
mossy log. If you get any idea of the creature at all, 
it will be something like that of an enormous black 
cat with a terrier in swift pursuit. If he but stand for 
an instant to see what frightened him and give you 
one of the rarest sights in the woods, you will see an 
exceedingly nervous animal, suggesting at once a cat 



*g Northern Trails. Book II 

and a huge weasel. He is much larger than a house 
cat, with short legs and a pointed face, like a marten's, 
and glossy black fur. That is as far as you will ever 
get in your description ; except perhaps the tail, which, 
you see, is long and soft and glossy as he vanishes over 
the log. And, like a scared cat, he fluffs it out like a 
bottle-brush to make it look big and to scare you should 
you attempt to follow him. 

Two or three times in the woods I have had just 
such glimpses of Pequam as I have described; but, 
except in hunting on the snow, only once have I seen 
him plainly when he had no idea I was watching him. 
I was sitting quietly in the woods at daybreak, watch- 
ing for deer and moose on Matagammon, when there 
was a rustle behind me and Moktaques went hopping 
by in the crazy, erratic way that hares have when 
hunted. " Kagax is after him," I thought, and turned 
to watch for the weasel, at the same time picking up 
a stick to stop the bloodthirsty little wretch's hunting. 
Then out of the underbrush darted Pequam, his muzzle 
twitching, tail quivering, — darting, leaping, dodging, 
halting, all on fire with excitement. Every hair on his 
body seemed to.be alive and filled with nerves; and 
I thought instantly of a young fisher that I used to 
watch for hours at a time in his cage. Whether sleep- 
ing or waking, on the ground or in his tree, he seemed 
to have eyes, ears, and senses all over him. A squeak, 




- ' 



" He had picked up the trail 
and darted away " 



Pequam the Fisher 39 

a chirp, a scratch, — the slightest sound, and instantly 
he leaped from what he was doing and twisted his head 
and whirled and leaped again. Once when he was 
apparently sound asleep I brought my thumb and fin- 
ger nails together and snapped the edges. A sound 
so faint would hardly trouble the dreams of even a 
sleeping wolf; but on the instant Pequam had leaped 
to his feet wide-awake and was wrinkling his nose in 
my direction. 

Just this same impression of intense vitality and alert- 
ness swept over me now as the wild creature passed 
before me, fairly quivering from nose to tail tip. Not 
ten feet from my hand, where the hare had made a 
wild jump, he stopped for an instant, twisted his head 
in a half circle to catch the scent, darted forward, ran 
back again with his nose to the ground ; and then, find- 
ing he w 7 as off scent and running a back track, instead 
of turning, as any other animal would have done, he 
simply leaped, whirled in the air like a flash, and came 
down in his tracks facing in the opposite direction. It 
was the quickest, the most intense action I have ever 
seen in a living animal ; and yet it was probably just 
an ordinary movement in Pequam's daily life. An 
instant later he had picked up the trail and darted 
away, absolutely unconscious that I had watched him.. 

As a hunter Pequam has no equal among the Wood 
Folk, He follows a trail with all the persistency of a 



40 Northern Trails. Book II 

weasel, and he darts forward with marvelous quickness 
when his nose has brought him within striking distance 
of his game. Of a score of fisher trails that I have fol- 
lowed in the winter woods, never a one but brought 
me sooner or later to the scene of his killing, with its 
record written as plainly as if the eye had seen it all. 
You may follow the track of Eleemos the fox, the Sly 
One as Simmo calls him, for days at a time, and find 
only that he has caught nothing and has lain down to 
sleep far more hungry than you are yourself. Or you 
may trace the round, deep pugs of Upweekis the lynx 
for uncounted miles through the bare, white, empty 
woods, and get at last a kind of sympathy for the big, 
savage, stupid fellow as you think how ravenous he 
must be; for the tracks lead to nothing but disappoint- 
ments, at the beaver house, at the rabbit's form, beside 
the deer yard, and at the hole in the snow where the 
grouse plunged for the night. But follow Pequam a 
little way and you come speedily to the story of good 
hunting : here a mouse, and there a hare, and there a 
squirrel, and there a deer. Careful, now ! He is gorged 
and sleepy ; and you will find him, not far away, asleep 
in a hollow tree under the snow. 

Spite of his size Pequam climbs and moves among 
the big trees with all the sureness and agility of a 
squirrel, traveling long distances overhead, and even 
following his game by leaping from branch to branch. 



Pequam the Fisher 41 

Like the squirrel he can jump down from an enormous 
height, flattening his body and tail against the air so 
as to break his fall, striking the ground lightly and 
darting away as if he enjoyed the dizzy plunge. And, 
like the larger cats, he sometimes creeps over his game 
on a lofty limb and leaps down upon it like a thunder- 
bolt; though, unlike Pekompf the wildcat and Lhoks 
the panther, I have never known him to watch in a 
tree over the runways. His nose is too good and his 
patience too poor to lead him to these pot-hunting 
and abominable methods. 

It is in following Pequam 's trail through the snow 
that you learn, as you do with most large animals, the 
story of his life. For the northern forests, in winter 
especially, seem but bare and tenantless places. Far 
in the South life seems to be the order of the universe : 
earth, air, and water swarm at all times with a multi- 
tude of creatures. Here all is different. Silence and 
death seem to have gripped the world and emptied 
it. From early morning, when the intense cold silences 
all things, to the short midday, when the feeble sun 
brings forth a jay's cry or a squirrel's disturbing chat- 
ter, and on to the early twilight, when the trees groan 
again and crack like pistols as the frost snaps the 
tightening bark, you glide along silently and alone on 
your snow-shoes ; and save for the crossbills and chick- 
adees and the rolling tattoo of the log-cock you seem 



42 Northern Trails. Book II 

utterly alone in the universe. No broad wing or gloss 
of fur or gray shadow of a deer disturbs the sharp 
outlines of the still tree bolls on every hand. Your 
own breath, as it drifts away in a cloud of frost among 
the trees, is the only sign of a living animal in all the 
snowy landscape. 

Now look down at your feet. You are standing 
where the dainty trail of a fox crosses the broad lead 
of a porcupine and follows it a little way doubtfully. 
Eleemos is uncertain, you see, whether to turn aside or 
go on ; debating with his shrunken stomach whether or 
not he is hungry enough to risk being struck through 
with cruel barbs for a coarse mouthful ; undecided 
whether to follow Unk Wunk and perhaps find him 
safe in a tree, or trust again to luck and patience for a 
sweeter mouthful to stand between a poor fox and death. 
There ! he follows the trail ; and by that you may know 
he is more than hungry. 

Life is here, you see; though it is now hidden away 
where it takes more than eyes to find it. Tracks are 
everywhere, all kinds of tracks, telling their stories of 
last night's wanderings, from the dainty tracery of the 
wood-mice to the half-filled path that leads you to the 
moose-yard on the other side of the great ridge. Follow 
any of them and you find life, or the plain record of life, 
that goes swiftly and silently to its chief end and con- 
cerns itself diligently about its own business. There, 



Pequam the Fisher 43 

a little farther on, are your own snow-shoe slots of yes- 
terday. And see, close beside them, following every turn 
and winding of your trail but never crossing it, are the 
cunning tracks of Pequam the fisher. Clear to your 
camp in a five-mile circle he followed your trail, and 
even now, behind you, he may be sniffing again at the 
new, strange tracks that rouse his curiosity. 

Once, feeling that I was followed, I stole back cau- 
tiously and caught him hanging to my heels like a 
shadow; but why he follows my trail I have never 
been able to find out. It is a good plan, in the winter 
woods, to scatter food along your trail, for it overcomes 
the Wood Folk's distrust of man's footprints ; but long 
before I found that out and practiced it Pequam had 
followed me. Perhaps he has followed the trappers so 
long, to steal the bait from their marten traps, that it 
has become a habit. 

It was on a morning like this, still and cold and life- 
less, that I left the big lumber camp on the Dungarvon 
and struck off eastward for the barrens. I was after cari- 
bou ; but two miles away in the woods I ran across old 
Newell the Indian, whose hunting camp was far up the 
river, moving swiftly along, with his eyes on a fresh trail. 

"Hello, brother! what you hunt urn?" I hailed him. 

For answer he pointed with a grunt to the snow, 
where a fisher had gone along that morning as if some 
one were after him. 



44 Northern Trails. Book II 

" Pequam in a hurry this morning. Thinks if Newell 
around, fisher better mog along somewhere else," I ven- 
tured; and the grim old face before me softened at the 
tribute to his skill in hunting. 

" Oh, I get um," he said, smiling. " Das de fellow rob 
my saple traps. Find um where he kill deer dis morny. 
Now he go off wid hees belly full, sleepy, oh, sleepy. 
Find um bimeby, pretty soon quick now. You wan' go 
along help um ? " he added invitingly. 

That was a new kind of hunting for me ; so I left the 
caribou gladly and followed the old Indian. He had no 
gun; only an ax; and I was curious to know how he 
intended to catch so spry and wary an animal unaided ; 
but I asked no questions, following silently and keeping 
out to one side of the trail, looking far ahead for a 
glimpse and a possible shot at Pequam among the trees. 
Indeed, it was probably the sight of my rifle and a light 
ax at my belt that caused Newell to issue his invitation. 

The fisher was plainly suspicious or alarmed, for 
he was traveling rapidly, yet with marvelous craftiness, 
Newell assured me that Pequam had neither seen nor 
smelled him. Probably he had eaten full and was now 
minded to lie down for a long sleep, and, like a bear 
seeking a winter den after the telltale snow has fallen, 
was making a cunning trail to deceive and mislead any 
that might try to find him. This was my own explana- 
tion and good enough for the moment ; but later Newell 



Pequam the Fisher 45 

gave a very different reason for the crooked trail we 
were following. 

Again and again the trail doubled on itself where 
Pequam came back for a distance, stepping in his own 
footprints, and then leaped away in a great side jump 
into some thick cover where his new tracks were hidden. 
Newell, who was watching for such things, generally 
saw the trick and turned aside ; but more than once he 
was deceived, and we went on to find the trail ending 
abruptly with a single footprint in the snow. Then we 
would turn back and hunt on either side till we picked 
up the trail again. 

Twice the tracks ended at the foot of a great tree 
where Pequam had climbed and ran among the branches 
overhead ; and then we had to circle widely to find 
where he had leaped down and run on again. Once he 
tunneled for a long distance under the snow ; and when 
we found the trail it was far out to one side and running 
at right angles to his former course. So we followed 
him, mile after mile, and I had long given up the thought 
of shooting in the fascination of working out the riddle 
which Pequam had spread for us, when Newell, who had 
been growing more and more cautious for the past ten 
minutes, stopped suddenly and pointed ahead. And 
when I glided up to him there was no sign of a den 
or a hidden log, but only a little hollow half filled 
with a flurry of snow where the trail disappeared, as if 



46 Northern Trails. Book II 

Pequam had suddenly taken wings to himself and 
flown away. 

" Where is he ? " I whispered. 

" Oh, we got um now, good place," chuckled Newell. 
"Pequam tink he fool um oF Injun; hide hees footin'. 
Now he tink safe, go sleep. Guess he fool self dis 
time — By cosh ! oh, by cosh ! " 

From a great hole in the top of a fallen log, fifty feet 
away, a black streak shot out and vanished in a flurry 
of snow. Pequam, instead of going in at this hole, had 
tunneled out of sight for ten or fifteen feet and had 
gone in at the opposite end of the log, which was 
hidden by the deep snow and bending evergreens. A 
cunning trick ; for any one approaching the half-buried 
log would see the inviting hole at the top but find no 
track leading up to it, and so would conclude naturally 
that the den was unoccupied. Had we been an hour 
later we would have found him heavy with sleep in 
the log; but we had followed too hot on his trail. He 
had barely settled himself down in his warm den under 
the snow when our approach startled him and he was 
off on another crooked trail. 

We stopped where we were to " bile kittle " ; for the 
cold of the northern forests is killing in its intensity, 
and the moment you cease action that moment Nature 
clamors for fire and food with an insistence never 
known elsewhere. Late in the afternoon, after following 



Pequa?n the Fisher 47 

the fresh trail through all its doublings and windings, 
we came to where it leaped aside without warning 
into a dense thicket of low firs. There it ended, as if 
the ground had opened to swallow Pequam; but just 
beyond a long mound showed where a fallen log lay 
buried under the snow, and we knew we should find 
him there fast asleep. 

Unslipping the light ax, I moved cautiously to the 
smaller end of the log, while Newell crouched at the 
butt and began to shovel aside the snow with a snow- 
shoe. My end of the log was solid ; in the whole shell 
after I had laid it bare of snow I found only a single 
hole, and that hardly big enough to admit a squirrel. 
Meanwhile Newell had pushed a pole into the hollow 
butt till it was seized savagely and almost jerked out 
of his hand. A fierce snarl and a muffied scratching 
told us plainly that we had reached at last the end of 
the trail. 

Very deliberately the old Indian cut a dozen more 
poles, while I stood guard, and wedged them tightly 
in the hollow butt. Next he enlarged the squirrel hole, 
and I had a glimpse of glossy fur as Pequam rushed 
back toward the place where he had entered, only to 
find it shut securely. The squirrel hole was then closed 
by stakes driven through to the rotten wood beneath, 
and Pequam was caught, with only some six feet of hol- 
low shell to rage around in. 



48 Northern Trails. Book II 

I confess I would gladly enough have stopped here; 
for the sight of any trapped animal, however fierce, that 
has known all its life only absolute liberty, always 
awakens in me the desire to break its bars and set it 
free again. But Newell had no such scruples. Here was 
a prime fur worth eight dollars, to say nothing of plun- 
dered marten traps. The fire that sleeps in an Indian's 
eyes and that always kindles at the sight of game began 
to flash as he chopped a long notch through the top of 
the shell, driving in stakes as he advanced, and slowly 
but surely pinning Pequam into a space where a blow 
of .the ax would finish it all. 

Through the narrow slit I could see him, the flash 
of his eye and the white gleam of his teeth under his 
brown muzzle as he tried the opening, and then the 
sweep of his bushy tail as the ax drove him aside. 
Again and again he whirled on us savagely ; for, unlike 
the fox and bear that know when you have won and 
that lie down quietly for the blow, Pequam fights and 
defies you to the very end. Game killer and robber of 
traps he may be ; but traps are barbarous things at best, 
and the animal that robs them is only saving some 
innocent life from suffering, though he knows it not. 
Here he was, the shadow of the woods become solid 
substance at last, his marvelous cunning overmatched 
by man's intelligence. Not a chance left in the tough 
shell that held him fast, while the steel bit nearer and 



Pequam the Fisher 49 

nearer and the stakes pinned him in. And there was 
something magnificent, an appeal not to be answered 
lightly, in the way he clung to life, claimed it, fought 
for it, and screeched out at us defiantly that his life was 
his own and we must not take it away. 

" Got um safe now," I ventured at last. 

" Safe ! " grunted the Indian between the steady 
chucks of his ax, "by cosh, Pequam never safe till he 
dead ; an' den he fool me two, tree time wen he only play 
dead. Bes' cock um dat gun ; Pequam got plenty tricks 
he ant try yet." But there was no need of the gun, 
and I did not look to see the end. Before the short 
twilight had fallen on the woods we had stroked the 
splendid fur and valued it, and were heading swiftly for 
the little hunting camp on the river with Pequam's 
black coat hanging limp and soft and warm between 
the Indian's shoulders. 




5i 




**•■ 
«*%. 



HAT night, in the queer little 
hunting camp by the river, while 
1 [the birch logs glowed on the 
stone hearth and sang for the last 
time the songs which the winds had taught 
them, old Newell answered my questions . 
about the fisher we had caught, and told 
me of his lonely trapper's life and the many 
trails he had followed. Under his skillful 
hands as he worked, Pequam's glossy skin 
changed its face and crept down to the very 
end of the long cedar stretcher, ready at last to take 
its place in the row of marten and fox and otter pelts 
that hung outside, touched and made fragrant by ' : 
the wood smoke, and turning, turning for the last 

53 



w 



; *s* 



«% 



®s5 






54 Northern Trails. Book II 

breath of the forest wind that stole in through the sides 
of the little commoosie. 

What puzzled and interested me most was the In- 
dian's confident declaration that Pequam had neither 
seen nor winded him that morning, but had simply 
felt the presence of an enemy on his trail, and so had 
taken to doubling and traveling among the branches 
in order to throw him off the track. 

" Now I tell you now," he said earnestly, in answer 
to my suggestion that it was merely a precautionary 
measure, such as the bear takes before denning for the 
winter, " Pequam, jus' same all animals, know good many 
ting widout knowin' how he know. So long you jus' 
watch um animal, he don't 'fraid 't all. Don't see, don't 
hear, don't smell; ev'thing jus' right; go on feedin', 
playin'; feel good inside. Now you go get you gun, 
follow hees footin'. Bimeby he stop ; wag hees ears ; 
sniff, sniff; look all round de hwoods. Don't hear, don't 
see, don't smell noting; get 'fraid an' run 'way jus' same. 
Plenty black cat in dese hwoods. You follow an' find out 
for youself." 

It was the old question that one runs up against 
everywhere in the woods, in his own hunting and in 
the experience of woodsmen, the unknown sixth sense, 
or feeling of danger, which sometimes warns a creature 
beyond the reach of any known sense, and which seems 
to imply a kind of silent mental communication among 



The Trail of the Cunning One 55 

animals. Several times since then I have followed Pe- 
quam's trail and learned something about his hunting, 
and in every case have found much to justify the Indian's 
conclusion. When Pequam kills a large animal and 
gorges himself, he goes but a mile or two — often much 
less than that — and hides him away to sleep, making 
but slight effort to confuse his trail. Follow it now 
quietly, and you see where it disappears in the snow; 
and somewhere just beyond you will find Pequam asleep 
in a hollow log. But if you find the fresh track where 
he returns to his kill and follow it swiftly before he has 
settled down to sleep, he begins doubling and tunneling 
and traveling overhead long before it would seem possi- 
ble that any sight or sound or smell of you could drift 
away over the hills to where the Cunning One is hid- 
ing his trail from the telltale snow. 

Once, while following a fresh track, old Newell had 
a curious experience of Pequam's cunning; and last 
summer, when I noticed a fisher's track on the shore 
of Grassy Pond, under K'tahdin, my guide told me 
unasked of a similar occurrence which he had himself 
witnessed last spring when he was trapping among the 
Sourdnahunk Mountains. Newell found where Pequam 
had killed a deer on the crust, and followed the trail 
through the soft snow that had fallen over night, not 
half an hour after the fisher had left it. Mile after mile 
he swept along on his snow-shoes, through the swamps 



56 Northern Trails. Book II 

and over the hills, pushing the fisher hard and unwind- 
ing swiftly every turn and double and side jump and 
tunnel in the cunning trail. Pequam was heavy and 
tired. Two or three times Newell saw him plainly, but 
with his old gun, whose lock he must protect from 
the snow, he was not quick enough for a shot ; and still 
the game held on, and at every turn laid some new 
snarl or puzzle for the old Indian's eyes to unravel. 
Late in the afternoon the trail turned abruptly from the 
ridge, which it had been following for miles, and headed 
straight and swift for a cedar swamp. 

There were plenty of deer here. The spring hunger 
had driven them out of their yards; and in the early 
morning or late afternoon, when the crust hardened 
enough to bear their weight, they could get at the 
cedar boughs, which till then had been too high to 
reach. So long as they spread their legs or went softly, 
the crust would bear them up; but at the first heavy 
plunge they sank through to their shoulders, and were 
almost helpless. 

Half-way through the swamp the hunted fisher winded 
a large deer and leaped straight at him. The tracks 
showed that it was not his usual crafty hunting, but a 
straight, swift drive, with probably a savage snarl to add 
to the terror of his rush. At the first startled bound 
Hetokh the buck sank to his withers. A dozen more 
plunges, and he lay helpless. Pequam raced alongside, 



The Trail of the Cunning One 57 

leaped for his throat, and gave the death wound. He 
watched for a moment, crouching in the snow, till the 
buck lay still ; then he ran on again without stopping to 
eat or drink. Newell, far behind, puzzling out the trail, 
neither saw nor heard anything of the swift tragedy, but 
read it all from the snow a half-hour later. 

Straight back to the hills went Pequam, leisurely, 
carelessly now, and without making the slightest effort 
to hide his trail, as he had done all day, crept into the 
first good hollow log and lay down to sleep. Newell 
found him there and wedged him in without trouble, 
and took his skin within sight of the spot where the 
deer lay stiffening in the snow. 

Now the curious thing about the killing is this, that 
Pequam was running for his life, with no time to lose 
or to throw away. He had already killed one deer and 
had eaten more than he wanted, and, with an enemy 
after him, would disgorge some of what he already 
carried rather than take more to make him heavy. 
Indeed, after a kill and a full meal, Pequam, when no 
enemy is near, usually lies quiet for days at a time, 
drowsing away in his hollow log. A certain blind 
ferocity might perhaps account for his killing the deer; 
but that leaves his subsequent carelessness unaccounted 
for. And besides, unlike their smaller and more blood- 
thirsty kinsman the weasel, neither fisher nor marten 
seem to kill for the lust of killing. They kill only when 



58 Northern Trails. Book II 

hungry, and usually go back to any large game until it is 
eaten up to the very bones before they hunt or kill again. 

All this passed through my mind rapidly, and the 
Indian, in answer to my inquiries, confirmed my idea 
of the fisher's ordinary habits. Then I put the final 
question : 

" Why on earth, then, did Pequam kill another deer ? " 
Wy he kill um dat tother deer? Cause he tink Injun 
hongry, das wy he kill um." And then, as my eyes 
questioned his in the firelight, " Wy, you spose now, 
Pequam follow trail heself, jus' same I follow heem all 
day, huh ? Cause he hongry ; cause he want meat. Das 
wy black cat, das wy hwolf, das wy all animal follow 
trail all day long in snow. He hongry; he want meat. 
Bimeby — roofh ! scritch ! kill um deer. Eat um plenty; 
lie down sleep ; don' follow trail no more." 

" Now I follow Pequam," continued Newell earnestly, 
"jus' same he follow deer. Pequam hide, run, climb tree, 
go under snow; try fool um Injun. All time Injun 
keep right on ; thoo cedar swamp, up big hill, down 
tother side, — ev'where Pequam go, Injun follow hees 
footin'. Bimeby Pequam tink: 'Injun hongry; Injun 
want meat; Injun want eat um me.' Den he go kill 
um deer. Tink, p'raps, Injun eat plenty meat; go 'way; 
don' follow hees trail no more." 

Startling as was the explanation, there was a grain of 
reason in it, and I give it because I have none other to 



The Trail of the Cunning One 59 

offer. Years later, when I asked the Maine guide how 
he accounted for his fisher's action, he gave precisely 
the same reason, though more than ten years and two 
countries and many hundreds of miles separated the two 
occurrences. The black cat, he said, must have thought 
or felt in his own dumb way that by killing a deer and 
leaving it there untouched he might satisfy and turn 
aside the enemy that followed on his trail. In no other 
way could he account for the subsequent carelessness 
with which the fisher left the game untouched and lay 
down to sleep in the first good den. For Pequam, spite 
of his cunning, has room in his head for only one idea 
at a time ; and so long as you let him keep that idea, 
you may plan safely to catch him. 

A curious instance of this came out a few days later, 
when I took up my abode with the Indian and went 
with him to the traps, or wandered alone through the 
woods following the crooked trails. Newell had a long 
line of marten traps — saple line, he called it — follow- 
ing a ridge for nearly ten miles, crossing the river and 
returning on the other side. And down at the lower 
end was a rough log cabin where we could find shelter 
if overtaken by night or a sudden storm. 

The traps, which were scattered at intervals along the 
ridges, were little pens made of stakes or slabs or stones. 
Inside the pen was a bait of fish. or flesh; and over the 
narrow entrance slanted a weighted log resting on a 



60 Northern Trails. Book II 

trigger, so arranged that when an animal entered and 
seized the bait the deadfall came down promptly and 
broke his back. As he visited the traps Newell fre- 
quently carried a drag, a couple of flayed muskrats tied 
to a string, which he dragged along behind him, making 
a scented trail from one trap to another. Any marten 
crossing this trail would turn and follow it, and so come 
straight to one of the traps. 

One day a large fisher struck the line and made 
havoc of it. Pequam either tore the pen to pieces, or 
else he entered it craftily from the rear and sprung the 
deadfall harmlessly, and then ate the bait at his leisure. 
A dozen traps were so destroyed, and one valuable mar- 
ten which had been caught was eaten with the bait. 
For nearly a month this had continued. Hardly a day 
but Pequam found the line somewhere, destroying traps 
and good marten skins until his hunger was satisfied, 
and craftily avoiding every trap and device that Newell 
set beside the line to catch him. It was useless to follow 
his trail, for, except when he is gorged with food and 
heavy with sleep, one might as well try to run down a 
caribou as to chase a wide-awake fisher with the hope 
of catching him. 

At my suggestion Newell took up five of his large 
steel traps, which had been set for otter, and we set out 
one day to outwit Pequam by making him think he 
understood our devices. At a place in the line where 



The Trail of the Cunning One 61 

the big fisher's visits had been most frequent we took 
away the triggers from three of the deadfalls in succession 
and propped the logs up securely so that they could not 
fall. The pens were doubled in strength, so that even 
Pequam could not destroy them ; and at the entrance of 
each pen we placed a steel trap covered over with snow. 
The two outside traps were left sprung and harmless, 
but the middle one had its jaws open ready for business ; 
and a fresh drag was made, connecting the three traps 
and extending out a half mile on either side. My idea 
was that Pequam would first find one of the outside 
traps and poke it about cautiously till he was sure it 
was harmless, and then go straight to the next one. 

Farther down the line we tried another device. In 
the center of a hollow stump we stuck a pole with a 
fresh-killed rabbit swinging at the top. A row of stakes 
was then driven about the stump, their tops sharpened 
and pointing outward, so that Pequam could not reach 
the stump except through one entrance in the encircling 
fence. At the entrance we left a steel trap sprung, and 
covered it carefully with snow ; but in the hollow at the 
top of the stump was another with its hidden jaws wide 
open, ready for Pequam when he should come to pull 
down the pole and carry off his prize. During the night 
a light snow fell and covered up every trace of our work. 

Two days later there was an interesting story to read 
in the snow. Pequam had followed the line till he came 



62 Northern Trails. Book II 

to the first steel trap, and instantly he set about under- 
standing the new arrangement. A dozen times he went 
about the pen, trying every crevice with his nose and 
eyes. Then he came to the entrance and very carefully 
scraped away the snow till the harmless trap was bare. 
He tried it, cautiously at first, with gentle taps and jabs 
of his paw; then more and more roughly, poking and 
jerking it about at the end of its chain ; but no warn- 
ing snap followed and nothing happened to hurt him. 
Whereupon he walked straight over the trap and ate 
the generous bait that was waiting for him. From here 
he loped on to the next trap, which was not harmless, 
and, thinking he understood such things, walked straight 
into it. We found him near-by with the clog caught 
fast at the entrance to a den among the rocks. 

Long after I had left the woods I heard from Newell 
that he had caught another fisher in the top of the 
hollow stump. Pequam had poked the unset trap about 
till he knew it was harmless, and then — just as he went 
to sleep carelessly after killing the deer — had climbed 
the stump without any thought, apparently, of another 
pitfall that might be waiting to receive him. 

But better than the trapping, and without any regrets, 
was to wander wide through the woods alone, far away 
from the saple line, to follow Pequam's trail and see 
what he caught and where he slept; and then at night, 
before the singing birch logs, to compare notes with 



The Trail of the Cunning One 63 

Newell and learn from him the reason for things that 
I could not understand. 

Unlike most wild creatures, Pequam does not seem 
to keep her little ones with her through the winter. A 
mother deer usually keeps her fawns until the following 
spring, breaking a way for them through the heavy 
snows, leading them to the best feeding places, guard- 
ing them from danger, teaching them from her own 
example the things which a deer must know; and it is 
one of the sad things of hunting that, if a doe be killed 
in the autumn, her fawn will have small chance to live 
through a severe winter, unless, as is sometimes the 
case, the fawn joins himself to another doe and follows 
her about. Even Upweekis the lynx often keeps her 
big, round-eyed, savage young cubs with her, teaching 
them to hunt and beat the bush together in the long 
winter when food is scarce. But Pequam, like all the 
tribe of weasels, which have scant affection for their 
young, seems to turn her cubs adrift when she has led 
them about for a little while in the autumn; after 
which their instincts and quick wits enable them to 
shift for themselves. 

In the hungry days, however, the fisher cubs let 
native cunning take the place of affection. The mother 
may cast them off, but they know her trail, and follow 
it at a distance whenever they need food. In the early 
winter they do very well by themselves, though they 



64 Northern Trails. Book II 

know little of the world then and are easily caught in 
traps; but when the spring comes and small game, is 
scarce, and they are neither skillful nor powerful enough 
to tackle a deer, then they fall back on the skill and 
generosity of their elders. Sometimes they find their 
own mother ; more often — for Pequam, like Mooweesuk 
the coon, has a streak of gentleness in him for his own 
kind — they take up the trail of the first big fisher they 
cross, and follow it for days to pick the bones and to 
eat up anything he may have left of his kill after his 
own hunger is satisfied. 

More interesting than these tagging trails of the 
young fishers are those of the foxes that follow Pequam. 
Foxes are always hungry, and in the spring, when they 
are ravenous and when Pequam takes to killing deer on 
the crust, two or three of them will hang to the trail of 
a big fisher and live for weeks on the proceeds of his 
hunting. Pequam rarely covers or hides his kill ; but 
if it be a small one, and the territory be not disturbed 
by men, he will often lie close beside his game, in the 
nearest log, and will rush out from his hiding to drive 
away the prowlers that would not leave a single bone 
by morning. 

Occasionally in the snow you may read the story of 
his watch and guard, and then a curious thing some- 
times comes out. Scarcely has he eaten his full and 
yawned sleepily when some prowler comes up on his 



The Trail of the Cunning One 65 

trail to share the feast. If it be another fisher, Pequam 
stands aside when he is satisfied and makes no objec- 
tion ; for the hungry beggar is a young animal, not yet 
big enough to kill for himself. The older animals are 
solitary, each hunting over a wide territory and rarely, 
except in famine, crossing over to the hunting-grounds 
of any other fisher; but the young have not yet found 
their own places, and follow freely where they will. Pe- 
quam, if one may believe his tracks, recognizes this and 
gives his crumbs ungrudgingly to his hungry kinsmen. 

When the foxes appear you read another story. Be- 
fore Pequam has half finished they come trotting up on 
his trail, and squat on their tails in a hungry circle 
around him. They wrinkle their pointed noses and lick 
their chops at the good smell in the air ; they open their 
jaws in a great hungry yawn, showing their red gums 
and their sharp white teeth. They are not beggars, — 
oh, no ! — these gaunt, light-footed bandits that with the 
crows and moose-birds follow Pequam, as a horde of 
hungry mouths always follow a shark at sea. Sharers of 
the feast are they, guests from the byways and hedges, 
to whom every smell is an invitation. Never a word is 
said ; but one sits behind the master of the feast and 
makes his jaws crack suggestingly ; the others move 
around and yawn prodigiously in his face, telling him 
politely to hurry up and eat quickly, so that the real 
feast may begin. 



66 Northern Trails. Book II 

The very sight of these hungry, yawning, exasperating 
fellows rouses Pequam's temper like poking a stick at 
him. He rushes at the nearest fox to annihilate him; 
but Eleemos turns and floats away lightly through the 
woods, as if the breeze were blowing him. Try as 
desperately as he will with his short legs, Pequam can 
never get any nearer to the white tip of the floating 
plume before him ; and worst of it all, Eleemos seems to 
be making no effort, but looks back over his shoulder 
as he capers along. Pequam turns back at last, only to 
hurl himself headlong through the snow far faster than 
he came; for the other foxes are already on his kill, 
tearing it away and bolting it in big, hungry mouthfuls. 
He scatters them like chaff and hunts one away into 
the swamp; whereupon the first fox slips in and gets a 
mouthful with the others. Then Pequam comes flying 
back and sits on his deer and spits impotently at his 
uninvited guests. 

He does not chase them again, but eats his fill, while 
the foxes sit around and yawn hugely. With a mouthful 
now to stay their stomachs they can wait a little longer. 
They are never still a minute, but move around and sit 
on all sides of the table. When he has eaten enough 
Pequam cannot quite make up his mind what to do. 
He is sleepy already and lies down on the deer; but 
the old habit of hiding away is strong upon him, and 
he wants to find a hollow log. He cannot sleep where 




" Rouses Pequam's 
temper " 



The Trail of the Cunning One 67 

he is, and if he goes away, the foxes will fall upon his 
game ravenously and leave him only dry pickings when 
he comes back again. He backs away craftily at last, 
and then, when a bush hides him and the foxes are tear- 
ing at the game, he rushes back and scatters them like 
a whirlwind. 

So the little comedy runs on, and each player writes 
his own part in the snow for your eyes to read. It 
always ends the same way. Pequam leaves his game 
grudgingly and curls him up to sleep in his hollow log. 
But he slumbers uneasily at first, as one does with 
something on his mind ; and before he can sleep con- 
tentedly he must get up once or twice to chivy the 
foxes, which by this time have eaten their full and are 
carrying away portions to hide in the woods. 

It is perhaps the thought of these hungry thieves — 
if even a fox can be called a thief for helping himself 
when he is hungry — that leads Pequam to leave behind 
him a curious sign of his ownership. Once I found 
where he had killed a porcupine and left the greater 
portion of it uneaten. Instead of covering or hiding his 
game he made, at a little distance, a circle of tracks, 
going around his game five or six times and leaving 
as many plain boundary lines in the snow. My first 
thought at the time — and I hold it still — was that 
Pequam was a young fisher, and had left a warning to 
any prowlers that might find his game. When I found 



68 Northern Trails. Book II 

it, only a pair of moose-birds had disregarded the 
warning; but I did not know, at the time, of Pequam's 
sleepy habit after eating, and it may be that he was 
somewhere near, drowsing away in a hollow log, and 
had made the cunning circles of tracks to hide his 
trail and to confuse any one who should attempt to 
find him. 

It is in hunting the porcupine without injury to him- 
self that Pequam's cunning is most manifest. Unk 
Wunk is one of the unanswered questions of the wil- 
derness ; so stupid, and yet so carefully shielded from the 
harm and hunger that torments all other creatures. He 
is always fat, while crafty and powerful beasts are starv- 
ing; and his armor of pointed quills generally shields 
him perfectly from their attacks. Occasionally the fox 
or the lynx or the big owl tackles him, when hunger 
becomes intolerable and they must eat or die; but to 
touch the huge chestnut bur anywhere is to fill one's 
mouth with quills ; and behind the bur is the lively tail, 
always ready to drive in the tormenting barbs by the 
dozen. Pequam alone has learned the secret of safe 
attack, and kills a porcupine whenever he is hungry and 
can find no better meat. Trappers take his skin, but 
rarely find any deeply imbedded quills to tell of these 
encounters ; while the late winter pelts of fox and lynx 
often show only too plainly how they have been punished 
in trying to satisfy their hunger. 



The Trail of the Cunning One 69 

A curious trail in the deep snow led me, one day, to 
what may be the secret of Pequam's success. He had 
crossed the clumsy trail of a porcupine and loped along 
it rapidly, till with a rush he headed Unk Wunk before 
the latter could climb a tree and escape the attack. For 
not even Pequam would dare follow along a branch and 
expose his face to the blow of Unk Wunk's tail. The 
tracks showed that the porcupine had thrust his fore- 
head promptly against a tree to save his face, according 
to his wont, and then stood ready, a bristling cushion of 
spears, defying anything to touch him. 

Pequam circled swiftly behind his game and plunged 
into the snow and disappeared. Deep under the deadly 
tail and the feet and body of Unk Wunk he pushed his 
tunnel ; then thrust his nose out of the snow just under 
the porcupine's throat and gripped him and held fast. 
A porcupine never struggles when wounded, but holds 
his thorny guard till he dies. Pequam, lying under the 
snow with only his muzzle exposed, so that the barbed 
and swift-striking tail could not touch him, simply held 
his grip on the throat till the tense muscles relaxed 
their spasmodic pull and lay still. Then he came out, 
opened his game carefully along the under side, where 
there are no quills, and ate his fill and went away 
untouched, leaving the briery, untoothsome morsels to 
any hungry prowlers that might follow his trail to share 
the feast. 



7<d Northern Trails. Book II 

Once since then a guide told me of following a black 
cat's trail, and finding where he crept up on a porcupine 
and tunneled under him and gripped the throat, while 
his own body was safe from attack under the snow. 
And I have no doubt the habit is a more or less com- 
mon one, and may be witnessed again if one will but 
follow patiently Pequam's cunning trail. Where fishers 
increase deer grow scarce, for Pequam kills them easily 
on the crust; and these two facts — the crusted deer 
and the outwitted porcupine — undoubtedly explain why 
Pequam is often fat even in the gaunt month of March, 
and why he sleeps well-fed and warm for days at a time 
while larger or faster animals must wander all night 
long through the hungry woods. 

Many other things were seen or read on the trail of 
the Cunning One, while Newell followed his lonely 
saple line, and the little hunting camp on the Dungarvon 
waited with its warm welcome to tired hunters in the 
twilight. Those were good days; and no hunting ever 
paid better in happiness than that which followed the 
trails without a thought of harm, and was content to let 
the snow tell its own stories. But, like all good times, 
they did not last very long. Work called me away ; and 
I like to think that the solitary old Indian sometimes 
missed his queer hunting companion, who used to go 
out for caribou and leave his rifle at home, and who 
always came back satisfied at nightfall. 



The Trail of the Cunning One 71 

The door of the little hunting camp now hangs open 
on its hinges, and within are only mice and squirrels. 
Newell is far away, following other trails. The birch 
logs that sang to us the woods' songs are now ashes, 
and the wind has scattered them to the forest again ; 
but Pequam's coat, still glossy and soft and warm, curls 
itself into a great muff about a little girl's fingers. The 
winter wind ruffles it, and it starts and gleams and 
quivers nervously, as if it heard a footfall on its track; 
and when you put your face down in it to keep your 
nose warm, as Pequam used to do when he went to 
sleep, there is a subtle, woodsy fragrance which speaks 
of fir balsam and birch smoke, and the still, white woods, 
and of a warm hollow log under the snow at the end of 
the crooked trail. 




73 




T 



HE sun was setting gloriously behind the 
bleak western headlands as our little schooner 



f\ 



doubled Goose Cape, nodding a solemn good-night ok^ 
with her jib-boom to the row of solemn seals on v 
the ice floe, and then headed up slowly into the great 
silent bay to her night's anchorage. 

Between us and the unknown waters towered the ice- 
bergs, some grounded fast in a hundred fathoms, others 
drifting majestically in the slow currents, with the long 
ocean swells racing and breaking over the wide green 
shelves of ice and boom-booming their hollow thunder 
in the deep caverns. Like a row of mighty sentinels 
they stretched clear across our course, from the black 
rocks of Maiden's Arm to the towering cliffs of Bou- 
leaux Cove, forbidding all entrance to the lonely lands 
and waters beyond. Every crevice and great hollow on 

75 



76 Northern Trails. Book II 

their shining sides seemed to be poured full of molten 
color, while the sunset caught their glittering pinnacles 
and broke into a glory beyond all words. 

Hundreds of sea-birds, gulls and penguins and " hag- 
downs " and unknown fishers of the deep, had settled 
upon the icebergs and folded the great wings that were 
weary with the long day's flight. Here they clustered 
in a dense mass in some great hollow, like a mother's 
shoulder, talking softly to one another ; more often they 
settled one by one in an endless line upon the topmost 
shining ridges, where they stood out like delicate ebony 
carvings against the rugged roof line of the icebergs. 
In the whole stupendous scene, rock cliffs and ice moun- 
tains and boundless sea and burning sky, the eye came 
back again and again and rested on these tiny dots 
against the sunset. The ear heard not the crash of fall- 
ing ice, nor the roar of the smitten sea, nor the hollow 
boom of breakers in the caverns; it listened for a low 
chatter, soft as the talk of birds in their sleep, which 
spoke of life and the gladness of life in the midst of the 
vast solitude. 

Behind us, as we watched the scene and the Wild 
Duck wore away to find a safe opening between the 
bergs, the dusk came creeping up over the ocean's brim. 
In front a marvelous light of sunset and ice and colored 
sea beckoned yet repelled us by its awful glory. All 
around us was silence, vast, profound, palpable, a silence 



Out of the Deeps 77 

of bygone ages, which hushed the sea-birds' chatter and 
which was only deepened and intensified by the far-off 
surge of breakers on the shoal and the nearer roll of 
thunder in the ice caves. Then out of the silence a 
groan, an awful sound in the primeval stillness of the 
place, rumbled over the startled sea. It was as if the 
abyss itself, silent for untold ages, had at last found 
voice, and the voice was a moan of pain. 

The man at the wheel, a grizzled old fisherman of 
St. Barbes, who took sublimity and cod traps, storm 
and sunshine, roaring sea and the sweet rest of snug har- 
bors all alike in seasoned indifference, whirled sharply 
and swept the sea with a glance like a needle thrust. 
Joe the cook tumbled up from the forecastle, his mouth 
open to take everything in. 

" What 's that, boy ? " he demanded of the skipper with 
the freedom of Newfoundland fishermen ; but the skip- 
per only shook his head, and looked seaward whence 
the sound had come. 

" Breakers on Brehaut Shoal," said the man at the 
wheel doubtfully at last. " Air in the ice caves," echoed 
Jack; but at the word the low sound rumbled on our 
ears again and we all knew instantly that it came from 
some living creature. 

Noel the Indian pointed suddenly to windward, where 
a hump of water separated itself from the sea and swirled 
and bubbled like soup in a pot. A huge whale broke the 



78 Northern Trails. Book II 

surface ; something flashed beside it ; then another surge 
and the whale was gone; but the awful moan was in 
our ears again. On the instant all discipline was lost in a 
great curiosity as I grabbed the wheel from the grizzled 
old fisherman, while he and Noel tugged at the main- 
sheet, and the skipper jumped for the jibs, and the cook 
ran for the skipper's glass, and the little ' Wild Duck 
whirled up to the wind and went poking her jib-boom 
at the soapy lather where the whale had disappeared. 

Now a whale is so big that puny men may be par- 
doned the supposition that he has no ordinary feelings. 
All the way up the West Coast and through the Straits, 
where we had struggled against tide and gale and fog 
and ice and the deadly monotony of cramped limbs and 
close quarters, my friend had amused himself by shoot- 
ing bullets at the whales that crossed our course, as one 
would chuck peas at an elephant. Since we could rarely 
get near enough to study the huge creatures it was fun 
to stir them up, and watch the sea " seethe like a pot " 
when they went down in a hurry. A repeating rifle was 
usually standing by the foremast, with which we some- 
times added a dish to our fare of cod and lobsters, and 
which served Noel well in bagging a young seal for its 
oil and skin. As the schooner lay balanced for hours at 
a time between wind and tide, and we saw with weari- 
ness another day without gain and another salmon river 



Out of the Deeps 79 

unexplored, there would be a sudden whoosh, like the 
breath of forty locomotives, and a great black back 
would come plunging up out of the depths. Then the 
weariness would vanish, and all watched intently as 
somebody grabbed the rifle and sent the bullets skip- 
ping. Invariably they did no harm at all, but only 
waked us up; for the huge black back would go pon- 
derously on its way, rising and sinking, with bullets 
skipping like hornets athwart its path and lighting 
everywhere except on the shining hump. When the 
•magazine was exhausted Noel would chuckle silently 
and go to sleep again. 

The whales were about us continually in all shapes 
and sizes, only a few of which were familiar; the rest 
plunged into soundless deeps or followed their own 
endless trails into the fog, like strange steamers, un- 
known and unnamed. Now a shoal of playing dolphins 
would go rushing, rolling past with a purring roar of 
smitten water like the low surge of breakers on the 
beach ; while over the mad stampede single individuals 
hurled themselves into the air in sheer exuberance of 
life and animal spirits. Again a troop of little whales of 
some unknown species would gather silently around the 
fishing punts, spying and peeking, as inquisitive as so 
many blue jays. Once a stray right-whale, and again an 
unmeasured monster — a sulphur-bottom, I judged, from 
his enormous length and his high spouting — steamed 



80 Northern Trails. Book II 

past like an express train, making the Wild Duck 
seem of no size or consequence whatever. Sometimes a 
dozen of the leviathans would be in sight at once ; again 
a solitary rorqual would cross our bows ponderously, 
always alone, yet maintaining apparently a secret com- 
munication with others of his kind scattered over twenty 
miles of ocean ; for, though I never saw them approach 
each other, they always appeared and vanished, turning 
to east or west all together, as if a single impulse were 
leading them. Knowing little about the uncouth crea- 
tures, I contented myself with classifying them all, as 
sailors do, into big ones and little ones, and would watch 
for hours in the hope of getting near enough to one to 
observe him closely. Meanwhile my friend and the 
sailors were rapidly and harmlessly going through the 
supply of cartridges. 

One day, when from an enormous depth a big whale 
shot his length up out of the sea and fell back with a 
resounding splash and shot the air out of his lungs with 
a whoosh to waken the seven sleepers, I grabbed the 
rifle thoughtlessly — having jibed at the others for their 
poor shooting — and took a quick crack at the monster 
before he had fairly settled down to travel. The steel- 
jacketed bullet caught him fair on the hump, glanced 
through, and went skipping out exultingly over the sea. 
Then, so quick that it made one rub his eyes, the huge 
form had disappeared and the sea thereabouts looked 



Out of the Deeps 81 

like a basin of soap-suds. " B 'ys, b'ys, but that tickled 
his backbone ! " cried the skipper ; but for me, at least, 
one problem was solved effectually. The whale has 
feelings, no doubt about that; and for the rest of the 
trip the rifle was kept in the cabin and we began to 
watch the huge creatures with a less barbaric interest. 

Another day, towards twilight, while the schooner 
loafed along in no hurry whatever to reach an anchorage, 
I was standing at the bow watching the shoals of fish 
and the circling gulls, when a whale broke water and 
lay resting on the sea. Close about him were some 
black rocks, breaking the surface as the tide fell ; and 
as Leviathan scratched himself leisurely, like a huge 
sea-pig, against the rough surfaces to rid his skin of 
the clinging barnacles, or lay quiet with his black hump 
above the water-line, he might easily have been mistaken 
for one of the rocks, about which the tide was swirling 
and ebbing. A big herring gull, heavy and sleepy with 
too much feeding, came flapping along. As he saw the 
inviting rock he set his broad wings and dropped his 
heavy feet to alight. The toes had barely touched the 
huge back when — plunge ! kuk-kuk ! There was a 
lightning swirl and a smother of soapy water. The 
whale was gone ; and a frightened and wide-awake gull 
was jumping upward, humping his back and threshing 
the air and kukkuking his astonishment at the disap- 
pearance of his late landing-place. 



82 Northern Trails. Book II 

Here were more feelings, delicate enough to feel the 
touch of a bird's toes on a back so big that, judging by 
what the whalemen had told me of the whale's insen- 
sibility while being lanced, I had supposed its nerves 
must be arranged about as plentifully as telegraph wires 
in the country. The whole proceeding was like the 
lightning jump of a sleeping wolf when a twig cracks, 
or a leaf drops close to his ear. 

One day, while the schooner lay becalmed, I jumped 
into the dory with Noel and pulled inshore to see what 
the herring boats were doing, and to collect some of the 
queer, unknown fish that were brought up in the nets. 
As we moved among the boats I caught sight of a big 
whale gliding in towards us with all the cautiousness of 
a coyote approaching a sleeping camp. He would stop 
here and there and pick up something, and glide forward 
again to left or right, like a fox quartering towards a 
quail roost. As he drew near I saw that he was after 
the scattered herring which had fallen from the nets, and 
which were now floating astern on the surface as the 
tide drifted them away. Closer and closer he came, 
while we all stopped our work to watch. The huge 
bulk would glide softly up to a tiny dot of silver floating 
on the ocean's blue ; the great mouth would open, wide 
enough to take in a fisherman, and close gently over one 
small herring. Then he would swallow his tidbit and 
back away slowly to watch the boats awhile before 



Out of the Deeps 83 

picking up another morsel. He always turned sidewise 
so as to look at us with one eye, as a chicken does ; for 
he seemed unable to see straight in front of him. But 
he had other senses to depend upon, and also that 
unknown feeling of danger when ordinary senses are 
useless, which the whalemen tell us is so strongly devel- 
oped in this uncouth monster. While he was nosing 
after two or three herring I motioned Noel to be quiet, 
and slipping an oar over the stern began to scull gently 
towards him. Hardly had the bow of my dory cleared 
the line of punts when he sank from sight; and when 
he came up again he was far away and heading straight 
out to sea. 

Farther up the coast, where the Straits began to be 
ice choked, another curious fact came out, namely, that 
some of these warm-blooded monsters, though they live 
amid the icebergs, are unwilling to come close to even a 
small cake of floating ice. The water there is always 
chilled, and Leviathan avoids it absolutely. More than 
that, though he is generally set down as a stupid crea- 
ture, he showed some small degree of intelligence in 
taking care of himself. Here on the West Coast, espe- 
cially under the influence of strong southerly winds, the 
tide will often set for days in the same direction without 
turning. Leviathan knows this, though many a skipper 
loses his vessel in the fog because of his ignorance of 
this steady eastward set of the tide. At such times the 



84 Northern Trails. Book II 

loose ice drifts away and the whales enter many of the 
narrow bays to feed abundantly on the shoaling fish. 
But when the tide turns at last, and the ice comes 
drifting back, the huge creatures leave the bays, fearing 
to be shut in by a barrier of ice to the whalemen's mer- 
cies. And though there be a dozen whales in the bay, 
as many miles apart, they generally turn all at the same 
instant, as if at command, and head swiftly out to the 
open sea and safety. 

Where the Straits grew narrow and the floating ice 
threatened to block our way altogether, we saw another 
curious bit of Leviathan's precaution. He would stand 
straight up on end, appearing like a huge black spile 
rising ten or fifteen feet above the water, and look 
far ahead over the nearer ice floes to see if the Straits 
were blocked. And if the survey were unsatisfactory, 
he would dive deep and come up with a terrific rush, 
breaching his entire length out of water, for one swift 
look far ahead to see whether his course were clear. 

Still later, when we had at last doubled Cape Bauld 
with its fog and ice and were heading southward, I saw, 
one day, a mother whale lying on the sea suckling her 
little one. They were resting inshore, close beside our 
course, and I had an excellent chance to watch them 
through my glasses ere the mother took alarm and dis- 
appeared silently, as a mother moose might have done, 
leading her ungainly offspring. To my wonder she did 



Out of the Deeps 85 

not lie sleepily quiet, as other mothers do, — that would 
have been fatal to the little fellow, — but kept up a 
rhythmic rolling from side to side ; now dipping the 
calf deep from sight, now lifting his head above the 
top of the waves as he clung to her side, so as to give 
him free chance to breathe as he fed greedily from his 
mother's great breast. And as we drew nearer there 
was a faint, low mumbling, — whether the rare voice of 
the whale, or an audible breathing through the blow- 
holes, or made in some other way, I could not tell, — 
full of a deep, uncouth tenderness as she talked in her 
own way to her little one, telling the world also that 
even here, in the cold, ice-choked wastes of desolation, 
life was good, for love was not lacking. Indeed, the 
tenderness and rare devotion of these huge monsters 
for their little ones is the most fascinating thing about 
them. 

Here were feelings of an entirely different sort; and 
now the heart of man was touched in the thought that 
there was something in the huge creatures of our sport 
that was, after all, akin to ourselves. At first our interest 
had been largely barbaric, to stir up Leviathan with the 
fear of man, and to see how quickly, like the oily flash 
of a dolphin, he could make his bulk disappear. The 
scientific stage followed, in which we spoke of unclas- 
sified varieties, hoping to make a discovery, and babbled 
of Denticete (the presence of teeth being more important 



&6 Northern Trails. Book II 

than habits of life) and Balcznidce and Physeteridcz, 
especially Physeter macrocephalus, and Orcinus gladiator 
in six varieties — 

" Wat 's that ? " demanded the grizzled old fisherman, 
who could stand it no longer. 

" That 's a killer-whale," I told him. 

" Oh," said he, " sh'ld think 't would kill ye to remem- 
ber it." 

So we gave up trying to name these monsters of the 
abyss with names sufficiently uncouth to be scientific, 
and brought back the crew to life by lowering a boat to 
see what kind of squid or fish or tiny mollusk they -were 
eating. For we had been told that, in certain species, 
the throat of one of these huge whales is so small that a 
pippin would choke him. 

Soon the sporting interest awoke. One who knew 
the whalemen well talked of harpoons and ambergris, 
and told the story of the Nantucket ship that had been 
charged, and battered and sunk, by a fighting old bull. 
Whereupon the grizzled fisherman of St. Barbes put in 
with an account of what he had seen last summer, when 
a whale blundered into the fishermen's nets during a 
storm. Three days he lay in the trap; now pushing 
his head into a net and drawing back in afright at the 
queer thing ; now breaching clear of the water to see if 
there were any way out, and falling back heavily again 
as if discouraged in his quest. Then he evidently made 




A long snaky body leaped clear 
of the water " 



Out of the Beeps 87 

up what he would call his mind, and the whole fleet of 
boats stood by and cursed impotently while the hopes of 
a. dozen families went whirling blindly out to sea on the 
flukes of a bewildered rorqual. But all these stages were 
passed ; and our interest was purely human as we stood 
now in a close group at the weather rail of the schooner, 
scholar and fisherman alike, to learn what hidden grief 
or pain had added a new voice to the world of waters. 

The whale rolled up again, nearer this time. There 
was a wriggle and flash beside him ; a long snaky 
body leaped clear of the water, doubling itself like a 
steel spring, and struck down a terrific blow at the 
whale's head. " Thresher ! " cried the skipper excitedly. 
The creature leaped and struck again, and a heavy thud 
rolled over the ocean, like the blow of a gaint flail. 
Before I could see plainly all that happened something 
struck the whale from below, and he rolled under in a 
smother of foam, while the ocean itself seemed to bellow 
forth its rage and pain. But whether the strange sound 
were indeed the rare voice of the whale, or the reverbera- 
tion of smitten water, or the vibration of great volumes 
of air driven out of the laboring lungs through the blow- 
holes, we could not tell ; nor had the fishermen ever 
heard it save when a whale was fighting for his life. 

While the whale was gone and we watched breathless 
for him to come to the surface again, the skipper and 



88 Northern Trails. Book II 

the old fisherman answered my hurried questions. Yes, 
they had seen the threshers, or fox-sharks, before, and 
had sometimes caught them in their nets. Once they 
had seen three or four of them fighting a whale as they 
were jigging cod on the shoals. They were from twelve 
to twenty feet long, the skipper said, including the pro- 
longed upper lobe of the tail, which they could use with 
terrific force as a weapon of offense. Then the scholar 
brought out of the cabin the skull of a fox-shark that we 
had found in the hut of a Labrador fisherman, a skull 
that was chiefly a pair of long, pointed, cruel jaws with 
rows of hooked ivory fangs fitting together like the 
teeth of a bear trap. " That 's it, — a thresher," said the 
skipper. "He '11 gouge them jaws into a whale or 
porp'se with a twist o' his tail, and rip out a bite that 
would fill a bucket. There he is ! " 

The whale shot out of the depths and breached clear 
of the water in his upward rush. As he fell back there 
was the same flash and wriggle beside him, the same 
leap as of a bent spring, the same heavy blow and 
moan. Then something else appeared, darting up like 
a ray of light, and the long blade of a swordfish ripped 
through the whale's side. The force of his attack 
brought the big fish to the surface, where we saw his 
shoulders plainly and caught the flash of light on his 
terrible weapon as he turned to dive beneath his victim. 
The whale sounded again, turning fair on end, with the 



Out of the Deeps 89 

thresher leaping over him, or standing on his head to 
strike down a last terrible blow, as the huge victim 
sought blindly for an abyss deep enough to escape 
the lash and sting of his enemies. 

The schooner fell away in the light evening wind, 
and the rush of the uncouth tragedy carried it swiftly 
away where no man watched the end of it. But this 
much seemed clear: the two strangely assorted bandits, 
savage monsters of the savage sea, were working to- 
gether to destroy their great and helpless victim, — the 
thresher lashing him down to the swordfish with flail- 
like blows of his flukes, and the swordfish driving him 
up on the point of his lance to the thresher again. 
What started the fight, or how it ended, no man can 
say. Here and there, between the ship and the rim 
of dusk, there would be a sudden turmoil, a flash and 
a whirl of foam. As the turmoil sank, a low moan 
shivered on the sea. So they passed out into the 
deeps and were gone. 







<£$ ■^53 c^MiiMJiSS 



91 





ggg^frfotdg 



(?s 






MATWOCK, the huge polar bear, 
drifted down from the Arctic on 
an iceberg and landed, one spring night in llllf 
the fog, at Little Harbor Home on the east : ' ' m, 
Newfoundland coast. 

It seemed at first a colossal fatality, that iceberg. 
The fishermen had just brought their families back 
from the winter lodge in the woods, and had made 
their boats ready to go out to the Hook-and-Line 
Grounds for a few fresh cod to keep themselves alive. 
Then a heavy fog shut in, and in the midst of the fog 
the iceberg came blundering into the tickle, as if there 
were no other place in a thousand leagues of sea and 
rock-bound coast. There were two hundred fathoms of 
water at the harbor mouth, and the great berg touched 
bottom softly, yet with a terrific impact which sent huge 

93 



94 Northern Trails, Book II 

masses of ice crashing down on the black rocks on 
either side.* It might stay a month, or it might drift 
away on the next tide. Meanwhile the fishermen were 
helpless as flies in a bottle; for the iceberg corked the 
harbor mouth and not even a punt could get out or in. 

Old Tomah came that same day from his hunting 
camp far away in the interior. Grown tired of eating 
beaver meat and smoking willow bark, he had brought 
some otter skins to trade for a little pork and tobacco, 
with a few warm stockings thrown in for good measure. 
But the trading schooner, for which the islanders watch 
in spring as a lost man watches for morning, had not yet 
come, and the fishermen were themselves at the point of 
starvation. For a month they had tasted nothing but 
a little dried fish and dough balls. Hunting was out of 
the question ; for their dogs were all dead, and their few 
guns were out with the young men, who before the 
advent of the iceberg had taken their lives in their 
hands and gone up the coast sealing in a stout little 
schooner. So Tomah, taking his otter skins, started 
back for his own camp. 

As his custom was in a strange place, Tomah first 
climbed the highest hill in the neighborhood to get 
his bearings. The blundering iceberg seemed to him a 
grim joke, more grim than the joke on himself which 
had left him after a forty-mile tramp without pork or 
tobacco or warm stockings. He was watching the berg 



Matwock of the Icebergs 95 

with silent, Indian intentness when a mass of overhang- 
ing ice crashed down on the rocks. Something stirred 
in a deep cave suddenly laid open ; the next instant his 
keen eyes made out the figure of a huge white bear stand- 
ing in the cave, rocking his head up and down as the 
smell of the village drifted out of the harbor into his 
hungry nostrils. 

Tomah came down from the hill to leave a warning 
at the little store. " Bes' look out," he said. " Bear over 
dere on dat hice, big, oh, big one ! He come here to- 
night, soon 's dark, see wat he kin find. He hungry, an' 
oh, cross; don't 'fraid noting. Bes' set um trap, ketch 
um plenty meat." Then, because he had left his own 
gun behind and could borrow none in the village, he 
started inland on his long tramp. 

Matwock the bear landed from his iceberg as soon as 
it was dark, as Tomah had said, and headed straight for 
the village. For a month he had been adrift in the open 
sea without food; because the seals, which had first 
enticed him away till fifty miles of open water stretched 
between him and his native haunts, had now returned to 
the coast to rear their young on the rocks and grounded 
ice-floes. Meanwhile the great berg to which he clung, 
as a mariner to a floating spar, drifted steadily south- 
ward over the mist-shrouded ocean with its base a 
thousand feet deep in a powerful current. Most of the 
time he had slept, going back to the old bear habit of 



96 Northern Trails. Book II 

hibernation to save his strength; but when the berg 
grounded, and the wind from the harbor brought the 
smell of fish and of living animals to his nostrils, he 
sprang up ravenously hungry. Never having seen men, 
he had no fear. Straight and swift he followed his 
nose, ready to seize the first food, living or dead, that 
lay in his path. 

On the outskirts of the village he came upon a huge 
deadfall which the men had made hurriedly at Tomah's 
suggestion, partly to get meat, of which they were in 
sore need, but more to protect themselves and their 
little ones from the savage prowler which knew no fear. 
The bait was a lot of offal, — bones, and fish-skins tied 
together with cod-line ; and the fall log was the stump 
of a big mast, water-logged and heavy as lead, which 
had come ashore years ago from a wreck, and which 
they made heavier still by rocks lashed on with cables. 
Matwock entered the pen swiftly, grabbed the bait, and 
thud ! down came the weighted log on his shoulders. 

Now a black bear would have been caught across the 
small of the back and his spine cracked like an egg-shell 
by the fearful blow. But Matwock was altogether too 
big, and the pen altogether too small. With a roar of 
rage he hurled the log aside, smashed the pen into frag- 
ments, and charged straight through the village, knock- 
ing to pieces with blows of his terrible paws the pens 
and fish-flakes that stood across his path. More than 



Matwock of the Icebergs 97 

one man jumped from his bed at the uproar to see the 
huge white brute rush past, and to bless himself that he 
was safe within doors. 

Matwock went back to his cave in the iceberg, angry 
and sore, yet with a strange timidity at heart from this 
first experience in the abodes of men. What the abom- 
inable thing was that had fallen on his back he had, of 
course, no idea ; but he had learned in a minute that he 
could not prowl here with the power and authority that 
marked him in the vast snowy solitudes where no man 
dwells. He was licking a wound that a chain had torn 
in his shaggy white coat, when a faint scratching and 
grunting, amid the ceaseless roar of breakers and boom- 
ing of waves in the ice caverns, came to his sensitive 
ears and made him steal out instantly to investigate. 

Down on a shelf of ice, on the seaward side of the 
great berg, two bull seals had floundered out, fat and 
heavy with food, to sleep and bask in the sun, which was 
just then rising. A glance told the bear that the big 
seals had chosen the spot well, where no danger could 
approach save from the open sea out of which they had 
just come. Of the berg itself they had no fear whatever; 
for it rose behind them a hundred feet in a sharp incline 
to where a score of glistening spires and minarets began, 
on which the sea-birds were resting. So they stretched 
their fat bulks comfortably on the narrow shelf of ice, 
watching the open sea, blinking sleepily in the sunshine. 



98 Northern Trails. Book II 

Slowly, cautiously, Matwock circled the berg, creep- 
ing upward along a great crevice to reach another shelf 
over the basking seals. His great feet were padded 
thickly with fur, which clung to the ice like wool ; and 
where the ascent was most ticklish the muscles of his 
fore legs contracted strongly, driving his claws like steel 
hooks into the ice. So he gained the high shelf at last, 
and lay down with only his ears and eyes showing over 
the edge as he looked down hungrily at his game. 

Below him was a dizzy incline, steep as a mountain 
top, polished and glistening with the frost and storms of 
the centuries, at the foot of which the unconscious seals 
were basking. Very deliberately Matwock chose his 
position over the larger seal ; then with his hind legs 
he pushed himself steadily over the edge, crouching low 
on his belly with his nose on his fore paws, which were 
stretched straight out in front of him. Like a flash of 
light he glanced down over the slope, striking the seal 
a terrific blow and knocking him end over end as the 
bear shot over him into the sea. There was a terrible 
commotion for an instant, which set the sea-birds flap- 
ping and clamoring wildly; then out of the turmoil 
Matwock's head arose, gripping the big seal by the 
neck. He laid his game carefully on the ice shelf, 
kicked himself up after it, and ate it there, where a 
moment before it had been blinking sleepily in the 
morning sun. 



Matwock of the Icebergs 99 

The presence of his favorite game in the strange 
land turned Matwock's thoughts from the village of 
men into which he had blundered with the iceberg. 
No boats came out or in to disturb him, so he kept his 
abode in the ice cavern, which was safe and warm, 
and out of which he wandered daily up and down the 
rocky coast. 

A few mother seals had their young here, hidden on 
the great ice-floes, which were fast anchored to the rocks 
and shoals. The little seals are snow-white at first — for 
kind Nature forgets none of her helpless children — the 
better to hide on the white ice on which they are born. 
Only their eyes and the tips of their noses are black, and 
at the first alarm they close their eyes and lie very still, 
so that it is almost impossible to see them. Even when 
you stand over them they look like rough lumps of 
snow-ice. If they have time they even hide the black 
tips of their noses in their white fur coats ; and if you 
appear suddenly they simply close their eyes, and the 
black nose tip looks like a stray pebble, or a tiny bit of 
bark left by the uneasy winds that sweep over the ice- 
floes. As they grow larger and begin to fish for them- 
selves they gradually turn dark and sleek, like their 
mothers, the better to slip unseen through the dark 
waters in which they hunt. 

Like all bears, Matwock had poor eyes, and depended 
chiefly on his nose in scouting. He would swim swiftly, 



ioo Northern Trails. Book II 

mile after mile, along the edges of the floes, raising his 
head to sniff every breeze, trying to locate where the 
young seals were hiding. But the little ones give out 
almost no scent at such times, besides being invisible, 
and Matwock rarely dined on a nest of young seals. 
The only way he could catch them was by a cunning 
bit of bear strategy. He would swim far out from the 
edge of the floes and drift about among the floating ice, 
looking himself like an ice cake ; or else he would 
crouch on an ice-field and watch for hours till he saw a 
big seal clamber out, and knew from her actions that she 
was feeding her young. Then he would head straight 
and swift for the spot and nose all over it till he found 
what he was seeking. 

When the big bull seals came ashore to bask in the 
sun, resting on a rock or the edge of an ice-floe whence 
they could slip instantly into deep water, Matwock 
invented a new style of still-hunting. He would slip 
silently far down to leeward — for the seal's nose is 
almost as keen as his own — and there begin his cau- 
tious stalk up-wind. Sinking his enormous weight deep 
in the water till only his nose and the top of his head 
appeared, he would glide slowly along the edge of the 
floe, looking exactly like a bit of loose ice drifting along 
in the tide. When near the game he would disappear 
entirely and, like an otter, not a ripple marked the spot 
where he went down. 



Matwock of the Icebergs 101 

The big seal would be blinking sleepily on the edge 
of the ice-floe, raising himself on his flippers to stretch 
like a wolf, or turning leisurely to warm both sides at 
the sun, when the huge head and shoulders of a bear 
would shoot up out of the water directly in front of 
him. One swift, crushing blow of the terrible paw, and 
the seal would be dead without a thought of what 
had happened to him. 

So Matwock lived and hunted for a week, growing fat 
and contented again. Then the seals vanished on one of 
their sudden migrations — following the fish, no doubt — 
and for a week more he hunted without a mouthful. 
One night, when he returned late to his cave, the great 
iceberg had broken its anchorage and drifted well out of 
the tickle, and from the harbor the smell of fresh fish 
drifted into his hungry nostrils. For the day had been 
sunny and calm, and the starving fishermen had slipped 
out to the Hook-and-Line Grounds and brought back 
exultingly the first cod of the season. 

Again Matwock came ashore, tired as he was after 
an all-day's swim, and headed straight for the good 
smell in the village. The big deadfall was set in his 
path, baited with fresh offal, and the log was weighted 
twice as heavily as before. But the bear had learned 
cunning and entered the trap from the rear, tearing the 
heavy pen to pieces as if it were made of straws. The 
fall came down again with a thud that made the ground 



102 Northern Trails. Book II 

shiver; but it fell harmlessly on the bed log, and Mat- 
wock ate the bait greedily to the last scrap. Then he 
entered the village, rummaging the wharves and sheds 
boldly, and leaving his great footprints at every door. 
When he had eaten everything in sight he headed down 
the Long Arm of the harbor, drawn still by the smell of 
fish that floated up in the still night air. 

Late that night Old Tomah appeared with his otter 
skins and a haunch of caribou at Daddy Crummet's 
cabin, on the edge of the woods far down at the bottom 
of Long Arm. All winter Daddy Crummet had been 
sick, chiefly from rheumatism and lack of food; and 
Tomah, taking pity on the lonely old man, blundered 
around in the dark to find wood to make a stew of the 
savory meat which he had brought with him all the way 
from his camp in the interior. At twilight a fisherman 
— kind-hearted and generous, as they all are — had come 
to leave a couple of fresh cod and hurry away again on 
his long, weary pull up the Arm. Daddy meant to cook 
the fish, but was too weak when the time came, and left 
them in a barrel in his little shed. Then came Tomah 
with his stew, and the old man ate and felt better. It 
was midnight when they had smoked a pipe of Tomah's 
dried willow bark and traded the scant news from the 
two ends of the wilderness and turned in to sleep. 

A terrible racket in the shed roused them — whack! 
bang! thump! Something was out there knocking 



Matwock of the Icebergs 103 

everything to pieces. Daddy, under the bedclothes, 
began to shiver and wail that the devil himself had 
come to fetch him. Tomah tumbled out of his caribou 
skins and jumped up like a jack-in-a-box, just as a barrel 
was flung against the door with a crash that made it 
shiver. In the appalling silence that followed they 
heard the p'chap, p'chap of some huge beast crunching 
the codfish between his jaws. 

Tomah had brought his gun this time. He grabbed 
it from behind the stove, pulled the big hammer back, 
and felt with his fingers to be sure that the cap was 
ready on the nipple. He stole to the door and opened 
it cautiously, pushing the gun-barrel out ahead of him. 
A huge white beast turned swiftly as the door squeaked. 
Tomah, making out what seemed to him a great head 
in the darkness, poked the muzzle of the gun into it 
and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening roar; 
the door was slammed back in the face of the old 
Indian with a force that sent him sprawling on his 
back. Daddy with a last terrible groan lay still, as if 
it were all over. 

When Tomah scrambled to his feet, his ears ringing, 
his nose filled with pungent powder smoke, there lay 
Matwock at the end of his long trail. He was lying 
as if asleep, his great paws outspread across the thresh- 
old, his head resting heavily between them. The tail 
of the last codfish stuck out of a corner of his mouth, 



104 Northern Trails, Book II 

and his lips were parted in a ferocious grin, as if to the 
end it were all a huge joke. 

" Py cosh ! " said Tomah, rubbing his scalp and look- 
ing down in a puzzled way at the great beast, " why I go 
lug um dat caribou forty mile, huh ? Plenty meat here 
— oh, plenty ! " he added, as he dragged the great head 
aside, and shut the door, and rolled up in his caribou 
skins for another nap. 







^m 



AGLORIOUS salmon river 
. unnamed but not unknown pj 
to the few Newfoundland fisher- ' 
men who have explored the rugged 
East Coast, comes singing and 
shouting down through the woods 
and leaps hilariously over Kops- 
waugan, the jumping place. Below the falls 
the river roars and tumbles among the great 
rocks ; spreads a little into numerous chan- 
nels of rushing white water; gathers again 
into a strong, even, rippling current, full of 
crinkly yellow lights ; rolls through a huge 
pool sedately; and then goes shouting down 

the rapids to another fall. Birds are singing 

107 




108 Northern Trails. Book II 

to the swelling buds ; the wind rustles among the new 
leaves and hums steadily in the spruce tops; the air 
quivers to the rhythmic throbbing of the falls; a deep 
organ peal rolls up from the rapids ; but all these sounds 
and subtle harmonies are but dreams of the sleeping 
woods, — for listen ! over all broods the unbroken silence 
of the wilderness. 

Just below the falls, where the torrent spreads into 
hurrying white channels, a man with a salmon rod is 
standing on a flat rock that juts into the current. All 
the bright sunny morning he has been standing there, 
his ears full of bird and river music, his eyes full of the 
rushing foam and sunlight of the river, his heart brimful 
of all that is good in the wilderness. A couple of salmon, 
little nine-pounders, lie on a shaded mossy bank, where 
Noel sits smoking his pipe. Now and then the Indian 
quietly advises trying a pool lower down; and the 
advice is good, because the river is full of salmon, and 
down below, where they have not seen the fly, they will 
come up with a rush at anything. Here they have 
already grown shy from seeing the little Jock Scott 
sweeping over the foam, followed by the terrific rushes 
of two captured salmon and of three more that broke 
away gloriously. But it is only a small part of fishing to 
catch fish, and the man finds it perfect where he is, 
thinking it better fun to locate one good salmon and 
entice him to rise, rather than go below and catch or 



Where the Salmon Jump 109 

lose a dozen. So he stands quietly on the jutting rock, 
watching the river, listening to the music. 

So long has he stood there, following the swing and 
jump of his little fly in the boiling current, that the 
rushing movement has got into his eyes, producing a 
curious illusion that every salmon fisher will recognize. 
Not only the river, but the shores themselves seem 
sweeping along to keep pace with the hurrying flood. 
The big log that bridges the stream below the falls is 
running swiftly away, and after it come the white sheet 
and thunder of the waterfall trying to catch it. The 
green banks and bushes scud away like clouds before 
the wind. Even the great solid rock under foot joins the 
swift, unsteady procession ; and down we all go, trees, 
rocks, and river, swaying, jumping, singing, and shouting 
together on a glorious chase through the wilderness. 

In the midst of the rush and tumult the clear, sweet 
song of Killooleet, the white-throated sparrow, follows 
us, as if he were saying, Good-by, Friend Fisherman, 
Fisherman, Fisherman. And, spite of all the apparent 
uproar of rocks and river, the exquisite little melody 
sounds in our ears as clearly as if Killooleet were sing- 
ing behind our tent in the twilight stillness. 

The man's head grows dizzy with the delusion. His 
foothold, at best, is none too steady over the rushing 
torrent ; so he closes his eyes to bring back the reality 
of things. And the reality must be good indeed, judging 



no Northern Trails. Book II 

by the way his soul, like a wind-touched harp, is thrilling 
to the melody of woods and waters. 

As he opens his eyes again there is a sudden plunge 
on the edge of the farthest white rush of water. A huge 
salmon tumbles into sight, showing head and shoulders 
and a foot of broad blue back that makes the man's nine- 
pounders look like smelts in a cod trap. 

" Das de feller ; big, oh, big one ! " says Noel, straight- 
ening his back, and instantly the slender rod gets into 
action. The fly falls softly across the current; swings 
down with the flood and fetches up beautifully at the 
end of a straight leader, just over the spot where the 
water humped itself as the big salmon went down. Like 
a flash he boils up at the lure, throwing his big shoulders 
out of the foam in his rush ; but the fly swings nearer 
and hangs skittering on the surface. 

" Miss um, dat time," says Noel with immense dis- 
appointment; and the man draws in his line and sits 
down on the rock to let the big salmon settle into his 
sunken eddy and forget what he saw when his head 
came out of water. 

While we are waiting for him to grow quiet — " rest- 
ing him," the salmon fishermen call it — let us find out, 
if we can, what he is doing here, and why he halts so 
long in the midst of all this turmoil, while his instincts 
are calling him steadily up the river to the quiet shallows 
where his life began. 



Where the Salmon Jump 



in 



First, look down into the water there at your feet, 
where the river is running swiftly but smoothly over the 
yellow pebbles near shore. Nothing but smiles, dimples, 
and crinkly yellow lights, whirling and changing cease- 
lessly, as if the river here were full of liquid sunshine. 
Look again ; curve a hand on either side of your eyes to 
shut out the side-lights, and look steadily just below that 
round yellow stone under its three feet of crinkly sun- 
shine. At first you see nothing, your eyes being full 
of the flashing surfaces and the dimpling lights and 
shadows of the yellow flood. Suddenly, as if a window 
were opened in the river, you see a vague quivering 
outline. " Did he just come? Is he gone again?" Not 
at all ; he is right there ; look again. 

Another long look ; again the impression of a window 
opened, and now you see a salmon plainly. He is lying 
there, with his nose in a sunken eddy, resting quietly 
while the river rolls on over him. You see his shining 
silver sides, the blue tint on his back, the black line of a 
net on his head, the tail swaying rhythmically, — every 
line of the splendid fish as in a clear photograph. Then, 
as if the window were suddenly shut, you see nothing 
but dancing yellow lights. The fish has vanished utterly, 
and you must look again and again, waiting till the lights 
and dimples run away together; and there is your 
salmon, lying just where he was before ; nor has he 
moved, except for the lazy swaying of his broad tail and 



1 1 2 Northern Trails. Book II 

the balancing of his fins, while the lights above hid him 
from your eyes. 

When looking for salmon, as with other good things 
in life, the eye is easily confused by a multitude of little, 
unimportant things close at hand. Standing on the 
same rock Noel will point out a score of salmon where 
you see nothing but changing lights and dimples. It is 
not because his eyes are stronger or keener than yours 
— for they would fail in a week if they had your work 
to do — but simply because he has learned to look 
through the intermediate superficialities for the better 
thing that he is seeking. Where your eye sees only 
ripples and flashes, his eye disregards these things 
and finds the big salmon lying just below them. 

Climb into the tree there, the big spruce leaning out 
over the water. Now the surface lights have lost their 
power over your eyes, and you can see clearly to the 
river's bed. There, close beside the one salmon that 
you glimpsed for a moment, a dozen more are lying. 
Above and below they sprinkle the river, each one lying 
with his nose behind a stone and catching the current's 
force on his fins in such a way that the flood, which 
would sweep him away, is made to hold him in position 
without conscious effort, just as a sea-gull soars against 
the wind. 

Look out now at the white rush where the big salmon 
just plunged at my fly. He is not there, and you wonder 



Where the Salmon Jump 1 1 3 

if the shining leader or the sight of the swaying rod has 
seared him away. Now let your eye follow the current 
a little way. There, ten feet below, where the foam 
ceases, a monster salmon is lying behind a stone under 
a smooth run of water. As you look he darts forward 
like a ray of light ; you lose him for an instant ; then he 
plunges out just where you saw his first great rise. In a 
moment he sweeps back again and rounds up into his 
own eddy, lightly, gracefully, as a sloop rounds up to 
her mooring. There is something in his mouth, — a leaf 
perhaps, or a big black and yellow butterfly, — but the 
next moment he shoots it out, as one would blow a 
cloud of smoke. The current seizes, crumples it, and 
sends it down, spreading and quivering like a living 
thing, into the next eddy. Instantly another salmon 
flashes into sight, catches the leaf with a whirl and 
plunge, holds it in his mouth a moment and then blows 
it out again. 

That's what they are doing, just playing with pretty 
little things that come skipping and dancing down the 
river, as your fly came at the end of its invisible leader. 
Half an hour ago they were asleep, or utterly indifferent 
to all your flies and delicate casting; now the queer 
mood is on them again, and they will take anything you 
offer. But wait a moment ; here comes a fish-hawk. 

Ismaques, on set wings, comes sailing gently down the 
river. He sheers off with a sharp ctiwee ! and circles 



ii4 Northern Trails. Book II 

twice as he notices us in the tree-top; but in a moment 
he is scanning the water again. From his height his 
keen eyes see every fish in the river; but they are all 
too large and too deep under the swift water. Later, 
when the run of grilse comes in, he will be able to pick 
up a careless one ; but now he just looks over the river, 
as if it were his own preserve, and circles back to the 
lake where his nest is. When he brings his little ones 
down here to fish, you will see them at first whirling 
low over the water, all excitement at seeing so many big 
salmon for the first time. But the ripples and the danc- 
ing lights bother their eyes, just as they do yours; and 
then you will hear Ismaques whistling them up higher 
where they can see better. 

As we stand on the rock once more and the fly goes 
sweeping down the current, there is the same swift rush 
of our big salmon in the same spot, and another miss. 
He is rising short, that is, behind the fly; which shows 
that he is a bit suspicious, and that our lure is too large. 
As we change it leisurely for a smaller one of the same 
kind, the heavy plunge of a fish draws your attention 
up-stream, where a salmon is jumping repeatedly high 
out of water just below the falls. " What is he jumping 
there for ? " You will laugh when I tell you that he is 
trying to get a good look at the falls; but that is true, 
nevertheless. Come up to the fallen spruce that bridges 
the river, and let us watch him there for a while. Our 




"A salmon springs 
out " 



Where the Salmon Jump 1 1 5 

big salmon will keep ; he is in a rising mood ; and when 
we get him, fishing is over for the day, for we have 
enough. 

Below the falls, which are here some ten or twelve 
feet high, salmon are jumping continually. As you 
watch the heavy white rush of water other salmon 
poke their heads out of the foam, look at the falls a 
moment, and disappear. Then a silver gleam flashes 
through some black water; a salmon springs out, flies 
in a great arc up to the rim of the falls, just touches 
the falling sheet of water, plunges over the brim, and 
disappears with a victorious flash of his broad tail into 
the swift water above. He has done it, — jumped the 
falls, — and though the whole thing was swift as light, 
you have the impression that at last you know just how 
it was done. 

Down yonder are some lower falls, and there you can 
see the salmon leaping clear over them in a single 
spring, rising out of the foam below and disappearing 
into the swift, clear stream above, without even touch- 
ing the falling sheet of water ; but here it is different. 
Salmon after salmon springs out, lands on his tail 
against the falling water just below the brim of the 
falls, and then plunges up and over, as his tail, like a 
bent spring, recoils from. under him. 

Now throw a stone or two into the falls, just where 
that last salmon struck. There ! you hit it with a big 



n6 Northern Trails. Book II 

one ; and in a flash you see and hear that the sheet 
of falling water is thinnest there, and that the face of 
the rock lies close beneath. Here is a suggestion which 
may explain why and how the salmon jump. 

Down on the still reaches of the river they jump 
continually, especially in the late afternoon. That is 
partly for fun and play, no doubt; but it is also for 
practice, to accustom themselves to high jumps, and to 
learn how to land on head or tail as they please. Here 
under the falls they jump out of water, and again hold 
their heads above the foam, as you see them, to study 
the place and see where they must strike in order to 
succeed. There to the left is a spot where the falls are 
a foot lower than the average; but though you watch 
all day you will not see a single salmon jump there, 
where you would naturally expect him to try. The river 
pours swiftly through this notch, worn in the softer rock, 
and spurts far out from the face of the wall beneath. 
Were a salmon to strike there, he would find no solid 
purchase from which to finish his leap, but would be 
overwhelmed in a flash by the force of the cataract. 

To the right of this notch are two places which seem 
to be favorites with the salmon. Again and again, in 
days of watching, you will see them land on their bent 
tails in these two spots. As they land their tails strike 
down through the falling water, touch the rock beneath, 
and recoil like steel springs; and the salmon bound 



• Where the Salmon ywnp 1 1 7 

up, like rubber balls, and vanish over the brim. Occa- 
sionally they fail, and you have a confused impression of 
a big silver fish hurled into the turmoil below. Look ! 
there in the shallow eddy, beside that rock on the 
shore. There is a fat, eighteen-pound salmon struggling 
to hold his place. The cruel gash in his side shows all 
too plainly that he failed in his jump and was hurled 
back upon the rocks. 

To stay here now is death to Kopseep ; for even 
should he escape the bear and otter and eagle, a 
multitude of parasites, plant and animal, would fasten 
upon the wound and suck his life away. That is what 
his slime is for, to oil his silver sides and keep away 
these deadly fungi that swarm in fresh water. Once the 
scales are scraped away and the tender flesh laid bare 
Kopseep has no protection, and to stay in the river is 
suicide. But even here Nature is not unkind ; nor does 
she ever forget a creature's needs. Other salmon eat 
nothing while they are moving up the rivers to their 
spawning beds, and appetite itself vanishes; but the 
wounded fish there suddenly feels within him the need 
of recuperation, and takes to feeding greedily upon 
whatever the river brings him. Toss in a worm, a bit of 
meat, a fly, — anything eatable, and he rises to it swiftly. 
In a few hours he feels better, and whirls in the current 
and goes speeding back to the sea, where the salt water 
destroys the parasites and heals his wound and makes 



u8 Northern Trails. Book II 

him strong again. But he will not come back to the 
river again this year. 

A half-mile above there is another fall, higher than 
this one. Let us go up, and find there the most diffi- 
cult problem of all to answer. 

A single glance at the falls tells you instantly that 
they are too high for any salmon to leap. Other rivers 
with a fall no higher than this one are barred to the 
salmon, which run up only as far as the falls and then 
turn back to the sea, or else spawn at the mouths of 
shallow brooks along the way. But the salmon in this 
river go clear to the head waters. You can see them 
jumping and catch a dozen above the falls. Here, just 
below the cataract, they are springing high out of water, 
or poking their heads out of the foam, just as they did 
at the lower falls, in order to study the difficult place. 

As you watch, a big salmon flashes up in a great arc 
and tumbles into the sheet of falling water, not half-way 
up to the top. Soon another follows him, striking in the 
same place. You watch closely but see nothing more ; 
they have simply vanished into the falls. A dead 
salmon floats past you ; another is gasping in a shallow 
eddy ; a third lies half eaten by an otter under the shelv- 
ing bank. Here is a place, evidently, where many fail. 
Now watch the topmost rim of the waterfall. 

Ten minutes pass slowly while you keep your eyes on 
the line where the yellow flood breaks over the brim 



Where the Salmon yump 1 1 9 

of the falls. There ! a flash of living silver breaks the 
uneven line; a broad tail cuts the air in a curving 
sweep as a salmon plunges safely over the top into the 
swift water above. That is probably the fish that you 
saw vanish into the falls, ten feet below. Now we must 
follow him, if we are to learn anything more of his 
methods. 

For twenty years — ever since I first fished the Sae- 
vogle — I had wondered how- it was possible for salmon 
to get up a waterfall which was plainly impossible to 
leap; and on reading the books I found that almost 
every salmon fisherman for two centuries had puzzled 
over the same problem. Standing under these falls, one 
day, and throwing stones at the spots in the falling 
sheet of water where the salmon were plunging in, it 
occurred to me suddenly that it might be possible to go 
in myself and find out what they were doing. On two 
rivers I had tried it unsuccessfully, and though I had 
glimpses of salmon lying on the wet rocks inside the 
falls, I was almost swept away in the cataract. Here 
the task proved unexpectedly easy ; for on one side 
the swift flood shot far out from the face of the rock, 
and the falling sheet of water was not heavy enough to 
knock one off his feet. So, if you don't mind a soaking, 
— which will do no harm here in the deep wilderness, 
where there are no microbes to give you a cold, — let us 
after our salmon. 



1 20 Northern Trails. Book II 

With rubber coats falling down over waders, we slip 
through and under the edge of the broad sheet of fall- 
ing water and stand close against the rocky wall. It is 
cool and wet here ; the hollows in the rough face of the 
rock are brimming over ; the air is full of heavy mist ; 
but the flood pours over our heads without touching us. 
A salmon is kicking violently among the stones, and 
you brush him with your foot out into the cataract. As 
we move along to the middle of the stream, pressing 
close against the wall, with the thunder of the falls 
pouring over us harmlessly, we come suddenly upon 
salmon everywhere : on the stones, in deep hollows of 
the rock, struggling up the scarred and pitted face of 
the cliff itself. Push on a little farther, and now you see 
a great crevice slanting diagonally up the wall almost 
to the brim of the fall over your head. A thin stream 
of water runs through it, making a fall within a fall. 
This crevice is full of salmon ; some dead, some lying 
and resting quietly in the hollows, others kicking, flap- 
ping, sliding upward over the wet stone and the slippery 
bodies of their fellows to the life above. 

Your first visit may solve the problem, for this river 
at least ; or you may have to return again and again 
before you see the thing accomplished from beginning 
to end. This is the time, for the river is just beginning 
to rise after the rains, and great runs of salmon are 
moving up from the pools below; while those that were 



Where the Salmon 'Jump 1 2 1 

here, resting below the falls for the great effort, feel the 
onward movement and start upward to the spawning- 
grounds at the head of the river. 

As you stand here salmon after salmon comes flying 
in through the falling sheet of white water. Some strike 
fair against the wall, rebound, and are swept away like 
smoke ; others, as if they knew the spot, plunge into a 
wet hollow, rest an instant from the shock, then wriggle 
and leap to the hollows above. Here is one that dashes 
in and lights fairly in the great crevice at your shoulder, 
on the bodies of three or four other salmon that are 
lying there gasping and struggling feebly. In an instant 
his broad tail is threshing violently, pushing him upward 
in desperate flappings and.wrigglings, up over the rock, 
over the bodies of his fellows; resting here, leaping 
boldly there over a little ridge, up and up, till with one 
last effort he plunges over the brim and is gone. 

However it may be on other rivers, the problem here 
is an amazingly simple one. The salmon simply leap 
into the falls, trusting to luck or instinct, or more prob- 
ably to knowledge gained from previous experience, to 
break through the sheet of falling w r ater and land in one 
of the numerous hollows or crevices in the face of the 
rock. Then, if not stunned or swept away in the first 
effort, they struggle up the side of the rock itself, and 
over the bodies of their less successful fellows, till near 
enough to the top to leap over. 



122 Northern Trails. Book II 

Here, as indeed in most falls, one may notice a curious 
rhythmic movement of the water. It rarely pours over 
the falls in an even flood, but rather in a succession of 
spurts, with slower and lighter movements between ; so 
that, both by eye and ear, one gets the impression of 
throbbing in the water's movement, as if the river were 
only one of many arteries, and somewhere behind them 
all a great heart were beating and driving the waters 
onward in slow, regular, mighty pulsations. Undoubt- 
edly the salmon make use of this fact, resting near the 
top of the rock for a slower and lighter movement of the 
water, when they throw themselves over the brim of the 
falls and so avoid being swept away after accomplishing 
the most difficult and dangerous part of their journey. 

Desperate as it is, this is probably the method used 
on other rivers where salmon surmount a waterfall which 
is plainly too high to leap. Dr. Elwood Worcester, of 
Boston, writes me that while salmon fishing on White 
Bay his guides told him of a place where the salmon 
climbed the cliff behind a fall, and where the fishermen 
collected barrels of fish for winter use every season. He 
went with them behind the fall, and watched for hours 
as the salmon plunged in and then began the almost 
impossible task of leaping up the rock. There, as here, 
only a fraction of the struggling fish ever reached the 
top. Some of the unsuccessful ones tried again; others 
sped away to heal their wounds ; the rest lay quiet among 



Where the Salmon Jump 1 2 3 

the rocks awaiting the poor fishermen, or floated away to 
feed the mink and the eagle. Nature called the many in 
order to choose a few, and the whole process was accom- 
panied by that apparent waste and perfect economy with 
which Nature always accomplishes her object. 

As we go down-stream and take up our position on 
the flat rock again, a heavy plunge out on the edge of 
the white current shows that our big salmon is still 
there and in a rising mood. He will take our fly now; 
and the rest is a matter of skill, with a large element of 
luck, which is all in the salmon's favor. But our glimpse 
under the falls has aroused a new interest in the hidden 
life of the big fish, resting and playing there in the 
turmoil ; so let us hear his story before we catch him. 




-5 




ONE late autumn, a few years ago, a big salmon 
came up to the head waters of the river and sought 
out a place for herself where she might hide her eggs. 
All summer long she had journeyed slowly up the river, 
resting below the falls and rapids to gather her strength, 
and choosing the bright moonlit nights to hurry up 
through the riffles, where Mooween the bear was wait- 
ing to catch her as she passed. Now, with most of the 
danger and all the effort behind her, she came straight 
to the shallows at the mouth of a cold brook where the 
bottom was covered with sand and yellow pebbles. 
Where the current rippled evenly over its bed of golden 
gravel she found the place she was seeking, and, like 
fish-hawks returning in the spring, her first care was to 
repair the nest that had been used for centuries by other 

salmon. Her broad tail fanned away the coating of mud 

127 



128 Northern Trails. Book II 

that had settled over the pebbles, and the current swept 
it away down-stream. Bits of rotten wood and twigs and 
leaves that had jammed among the stones she took up 
in her mouth and carried to one side, leaving the rest all 
white and clean. As she worked a great male fish, with 
a kipper hook on his lower jaw, came surging up and 
chose her for his mate, and then began circling about 
her, fighting the other salmon and chasing away the 
trout that swarmed hungrily about, waiting for the feast 
of salmon eggs that was to follow. 

When the nest was at last ready, the big male fish 
came and plowed long furrows through it with the beak 
that had been growing on the point of his lower jaw 
for this purpose ever since he entered fresh water. 
These furrows were fanned clean with tails and fins, and 
then his mate settling upon the nest began depositing 
her eggs, thousands and thousands of them ; so many 
that, had they all hatched and grown, the river must 
have been full of salmon. 

That was a busy time for the old male with the 
hooked jaw. As the eggs were laid he covered them 
hurriedly with gravel to keep the current from washing 
them away, and to hide them from the little trout and 
parrs that flashed about like sunbeams, and that, spite of 
his fierce snaps and rushes, would dart in to grab a 
mouthful and scud away to eat it under the banks or 
stones where he could not follow them. At times the 



The Story of Kop seep 129 

little bandits seemed to hunt in packs, like wolves ; and 
while the big salmon was chasing one of their number, 
the others would flash in and gobble up all the uncov- 
ered tidbits. They would even steal under the mother 
salmon and snatch away the eggs as they were laid, till 
the old male came surging back and scattered them like 
a puff of smoke into their unseen dens. 

At last, however, the eggs were all laid, and covered 
up safely where even the parrs could not find them ; 
and spite of all losses, there were thousands enough left 
in every nest to warrant a full supply of young salmon. 
Then scores of the great fish, which had grown lank 
and dingy and faint from their five months' fast and 
their tremendous efforts in running up the river, rested 
awhile, lying like logs over all the shallows, until the 
nights grew intensely still and over the quiet pools the 
ice began to tinkle its winter warning. A subtle com- 
mand ran along the river, which our salmon, like all 
other fish, seemed to obey without knowing why or how 
they did so. One morning they all turned in the cur- 
rent at the same moment and went speeding back to 
the sea, leaving to the little brook the task of hatching 
their offspring. And the little brook, which was used 
to such things, at once took up the work, singing to it- 
self the same glad little song that it had crooned for a 
thousand years over the hidden cradles of all the young 
salmon it had ever brooded. 



1 30 Northern Trails. Book II 

The winter passed slowly; a current of fresh water 
passed continually over the hidden treasures ; and when 
the ice broke up in the spring there was a general break- 
ing up down among the eggs in the gravel nest. Some- 
thing stirred vigorously within an egg lodged between 
two white pebbles; the covering broke and out glided 
Kopseep, a tiny male salmon. In an instant, following 
his instinct, he had settled in the tiny eddy behind one 
of the pebbles, and from this shadowy hiding-place he 
took his first look at the big world. 

All around him the tiny salmon were making their 
way out of the nest. As they emerged the current 
seemed to sweep them away like mist ; but in reality 
each one darted for the nearest stone or cover, and 
vanished as if the bed of the river had opened to 
swallow him. Quick as they were, a score of them were 
seized by the hungry little trout and parrs that swarmed 
in the shallows, each one hiding under a stone and 
watching like a hawk for food. But Kopseep was safe 
under a root, whither he had darted from the shelter 
of his first pebble, and his struggle with the world 
had begun. 

For a year he lived in the shallows as a little parr, 
hiding from his enemies and eating of the insect life 
that swarmed in the water. Then, as he grew in strength 
and quickness, he took to chasing and catching the tiny 
eels that squirmed in the mud under the still reaches of 



The Story of Kopseep 131 

the brook, and would flash up from the bottom and out 
into the sunshine to catch and pull down a passing fly. 
After every sortie he would whirl and dart like a sun- 
beam under his root again. No need to look for enemies ; 
they were all about him, and he always took it for granted 
that they were waiting to catch him, and that his safety 
lay in getting back to the cover of his own den before 
they had noticed his movements. 

Occasionally, spite of his lightning dash, a little trout 
would spy him and dart between him and his sheltering 
root ; and then Kopseep would make use of a trick 
which every little salmon seems to know by instinct. 
He would dart away, with the troutlet after him, to 
where the bottom was softest and whirl up a muddy 
cloud into which his enemy dashed headlong. Then, 
before the troutlet could find him, Kopseep was hidden 
under an inch of soft mud ; or else, fearing the big eels, 
he would scoot back under cover of the muddy screen to 
his own root, whither no enemy ever followed him. 

As for the troutlet, he had speedily his own troubles to 
attend to. Besides the larger fish, which always chased 
all smaller ones that dared show themselves in open 
water, the mink was gliding in and out like- a shadow. 
Kingfishers dropped in like plummets, getting a fish at 
almost every plunge; and the sheldrakes, that had a 
nest just above, were frightfully destructive, eating scores 
of trout in every day's fishing. So the troutlet, after one 



132 Northern Trails. Book II 

confused instant in the mud cloud, would forget our 
little samlet and flash away to his own den, thankful if 
he had himself escaped being seen and chased while he 
was chasing somebody else. 

In the midst of all these dangers the parr lived and 
throve mightily, and if one can judge from his play, — 
for he had already begun to leap out of still water and 
tumble back with resounding splash in the quiet after- 
noons, — he reveled in the strength and gladness of life 
and in the abundance of good things to be had for the 
chasing. In his first autumn the big salmon appeared 
again in the shallows to spawn, and Kopseep joined his 
fellows in scooting about and stealing the eggs whenever 
the big male with the hooked jaw was occupied in cov- 
ering the furrows or chasing away the horde of active 
little robbers that swarmed about him. 

Kopseep was now nearly six inches long, having 
increased a hundredfold in weight in a few months. 
Catching a glimpse of him as he flung himself out of 
water in vigorous play, you would have seen a beautiful 
little creature, his eyes bright as stars, his gleaming 
sides sprinkled with bright vermilion spots and crossed 
with the dark blue bars or finger-marks which indicate 
the parr state, and with exquisite pearly shells covering 
the deep red gills on either side. A trout, you might 
have said, as he rose like a flash to your fly; but another 
look would have told you plainly that he was more 



The Story of Kopseep 133 

graceful and powerful, and likewise much more beautiful, 
than any trout that ever came out of the water. 

All winter long he lay by his den, seeking little food 
and % growing strangely lazy. When spring came a curi- 
ous change crept over him. When he ventured into still 
water and looked in the wonderful mirror there (which 
was the under surface of the pool, and which you can 
see yourself by looking up obliquely into a glass of 
water), he saw that all the beautiful bars and spots 
of his fellows were slowly disappearing, being covered 
up by a new growth of silver scales. By the middle of 
May the new scales had covered all his body. A curious 
uneasiness filled him as Nature whispered that the new 
suit she had given him was for a new life, and at the 
word Kopseep turned tail to the current and went speed- 
ing down the river, where he had never been before. 
He was a smolt now, and all his brothers from the same 
nest were speeding down the river with him, leaving 
their sisters, still in their bright parr coats, playing and 
feeding about the shallows where they were born. 

It was a wonderful journey for our little smolt, — the 
more so because he had never before ventured away 
from the home brook, and he knew not why he went nor 
whither he was going on the long rushing migration. 
Down, down he hurried, now shooting easily through 
the dancing riffles, now whirled along the rush and 
tumble of a boiling rapid, and now caught up with 



134 Northern Trails. Book II 

irresistible force and hurled outward into a white chaos 
where all his universe seemed to be falling blindly into 
space that roared and trembled beneath him. But always 
his first instinct to keep close to bottom was with him, 
and even in the worst of rapids a turn of his tail would 
send him down to where the water eddied and rolled 
leisurely among the stones, while the rush and uproar 
went on harmlessly overhead. And everywhere he went 
he had a sense of comradeship, of hosts that were mov- 
ing onward with him to the same end ; for the river was 
full of smolts, gliding, dodging, flashing like silver every- 
where in the cool dark eddies, and all moving swiftly 
downward to the sea. 

So they passed from the hills to the low marsh lands 
and lakes ; and here they met shoals of great silver fish, 
their own mothers, beginning their long journey upward 
to the shallows which the smolts had just left behind 
them. 

A new flavor came into the water as they followed 
the slow current. It was the taste of the sea, and a 
great thrill and tingle passed through the shoal of 
smolts, making them leap for joy and dash onward, 
down through the first gentle surges of the tide, down 
faster and faster, till they scattered suddenly and hid as 
another shoal of great salmon flashed into sight, with 
a score of seals darting and twisting after them like 
so many black demons. Over the hidden smolts passed 



The Story of Kopseep 135 

the chase, like the rush of a tornado; then the little 
fellows darted out of their hiding and quivered onward 
till they passed deep under the surge and thunder of 
the breakers and vanished into the cool green forests 
of kelp and seaweed that waved their soft arms every- 
where on the ocean's floor, beckoning the frightened 
little wanderers to rest and safety. 

Here they waited a few days and fed abundantly, and 
looked out with wonder from their green coverts, as 
from a window, at the strange new life that passed by 
them, — hermit-crabs and starfish and sea-robins and 
skates and stingarees and lobsters and dolphins and 
Peter Grunters, — all with some outlandish peculiarity, 
or some queer, crazy way of flitting about, like dwarfs 
or hobgoblins ; so that every day Wonderland itself 
seemed to pass in procession before their windows. But 
the fever of migration was still upon them, and soon the 
shoal was moving onward more eagerly than before. 

New dangers met them with every mile. Strange and 
savage monsters with goggle eyes and stickle backs and 
huge gaping mouths surged out at them from coverts 
of rock and kale and sea-moss ; and from the bottom 
itself, where they looked like bits of innocent mud, flat- 
fish and flounders leaped up into the very midst of the 
passing shoal. But their life in the quick waters of the 
brooks had made these little smolts like bundles of 
tempered steel springs. They were quicker far than 



1 36 Northern Trails. Book II 

the big savage bandits that looked so much more dan- 
gerous than they really were ; and our own little smolt 
found no difficulty in dodging them and hiding under a 
frond of kelp till they had surged by. So the shoal 
passed on, still following the almost imperceptible flavor 
of their own river, till they were nearly twenty miles out 
at sea, and up from the bottom rose a ridge of rocky 
hills covered with waving sea growth. Here the fever 
suddenly left them and the shoal scattered, each to his 
own little den, just as they had done in the shallows far 
away in the green wilderness. 

A new and wonderful life had begun for Kopseep, 
and the very best thing about it was the abundance of 
good things to eat. Millions of minute Crustacea, tender 
and delicious, would swarm at times over his den, filling 
the water full of food and coloring it bright pink, like 
a tomato soup. He had only to swim lazily through 
it once or twice with his mouth open and come back 
gorged to his den, as if he had been swimming around 
in a rich pudding. In an hour he was hungry and 
would roll up through his strange food bath, filling 
himself again and again till the swarm passed on with 
the tides. Then, led by his perpetual hunger, he passed 
over the rocky ridge to where the ocean's floor slanted 
upward and spread out into broad level plains. Here 
the cod had laid their eggs in uncounted millions, and 
the codlings covered the place like flies on a butcher's 



The Story of Kopseep 137 

block. The little gourmand would stuff himself till the 
tails stuck out of his mouth; then with a wriggle he 
would spew them out and begin all over again, just for 
the delight of eating. 

Naturally, with all this good feeding, Kopseep grew 
till his skin almost cracked to cover him. When he 
first came to the ocean he was hardly as long as your 
hand, and would weigh perhaps three ounces. In a 
month he was a strong, shapely fish, a foot long and 
weighing over a pound ; and his appetite, instead of 
diminishing, only grew more and more voracious as he 
increased in weight. No more Crustacea or codlings for 
him now; he had himself joined the bandits that had 
at first frightened him, and was too big to be satisfied 
with such small fry. But when the shoals of brilliant 
caplin passed over him, making the sea look as if a 
rainbow had broken into bits and fallen there, his silver 
sides were seen flashing in and out among them. And 
then, as he grew bigger and the caplin passed on shore- 
ward with the tides, the herring came drifting in, like 
great silver clouds, with the sea-birds screaming over 
them; and these were the best food of all. 

So three months passed in the ocean and our little 
smolt had now become a grilse, or u gilsie," a beautiful 
fish of four pounds' weight, with his silver sides spotted 
like a trout ; only the spots were large and black instead 
of being small and red. As the summer waned scores of 



138 Northern Trails. Book II 

small salmon began to move uneasily along the rocky 
ridges where the grilse were hiding. A fever seemed 
to spread through the water, and salmon and grilse 
alike stopped their ravenous feeding. One morning 
the salmon moved off together, as if at command, 
and Kopseep with hundreds of his fellow-grilse fol- 
lowed them, the fever of motion growing stronger and 
stronger as they followed up the well-known flavor of 
their own river. 

Near the shore they stopped for a few days, waiting 
for the tides of full moon ; and old Daddy Crummet, 
who for weeks had not seen a salmon, set his nets again 
and found them each morning full to overflowing. Then 
when the tide was highest the shoal surged into the 
river's mouth, past the rocky point where the seals were 
waiting and barking like hungry dogs at the smell 
of meat. 

With a rush our grilse shot past the point, where the 
water boiled and flashed as the shoal doubled away from 
their savage enemies. A lively young seal plunged after 
Kopseep; but the grilse was too quick, and the seal 
turned aside after a large and lazier fish. So he gained 
the fresh water safely, and journeyed swiftly upward 
through the lakes, jumping and playing in his strength, 
till he came to the first swift run of water below the 
little falls. Here he put his nose down in an eddy 
behind a sunken rock, and caught the current on his 



The Story of Kopseep 139 

fins and tail in such a way as to hold himself in place 
without conscious effort, resting for his first leap and 
for the hard rush through the rapids above the falls. 

While he waited here Kopseep felt his stomach shrink- 
ing within him. There were fish in the river, — minnows 
and trout and eels, and lazy chub that the mink and 
fish-hawk were catching, — but Kopseep watched them 
indifferently and suffered them to go their own ways un- 
molested. Strangely enough all his voracious appetite 
of the past few months had left him — and lucky it 
was too ; for otherwise a single run of salmon would 
destroy every trout and frog and little fish in the river. 
And that is perhaps why Nature takes away the salmon's 
appetite and keeps it for him all the while that he is 
going on a journey in fresh water. 

As he lay in his eddy resting, or playing with any 
bright-colored thing that the current brought him, a 
troop of little silver smolts went hurrying and flashing 
by on their way to the sea. Though he knew it not, 
they were the little sisters that he had left as parr in 
the shallows when he went away, four months ago. No 
wonder Kopseep did not recognize them ; for they were 
hardly as big as the caplin that he had been eating by 
scores for weeks past. He watched them curiously as 
they darted past, wondering where they came from and 
why they hurried so ; then he moved up under the falls 
and began to jump and poke his head out of the foam 



140 Northern Trails. Book II 

to study the place, as the salmon were doing, before he 
took his leap. 

He tried it at last: flung himself headlong into* the 
falls and was promptly knocked end over end, and in a 
wink found himself bruised and quivering back by his 
own rock again. That seemed to teach him wisdom ; 
for at the next attempt he shot through a black eddy 
from which all the salmon took their leap, flung himself 
upward in a glorious arc, struck fair in the swift water 
above the falls, and in an instant was flashing and plung- 
ing up through the rapids. Not till he reached a great 
pool two or three miles above did he halt, and then he 
settled down in another eddy to rest for his next effort. 

So he journeyed upwards for nearly two months, 
tarrying below the worst rapids for a fall of water, and 
waiting for the rains wherever the river spread into 
broad shallows that hardly covered the salmon as they 
wriggled and splashed their way upward. Here, one 
moonlit night, something like a black stump stood 
squarely athw T art Kopseep's path. He was splashing his 
way toward it when a sudden alarm made him halt 
behind a rock. A heedless fat salmon went lumbering 
by ; the stump suddenly started into life ; then the fat 
salmon went flying out on shore from the sweep of a 
paw, and Mooween the bear went humping and jump- 
ing after him to catch him before he could scramble 
back into the river. 



The Story of Kopseep 141 

That was enough for our grilse. Ever afterwards 
when he saw, on moonlit nights, a black rock or stump 
in the shallows, he watched awhile to see if it moved, 
before going through the dangerous place. And this 
is the test which all salmon and trout apply to every 
suspicious object: if it moves, it is dangerous, whether 
on land or water. That is why you catch only flashing 
glimpses of them as you walk along the bank; while 
on the other hand, if you sit very still on a rock in 
the salmon pool and trail your toe or finger or a single 
leaf in the current, you may see a big salmon move up 
to examine it leisurely; and sometimes he will spatter 
water all over you as he plunges at the object in play 
and whirls back to his eddy again. 

Late in October Kopseep found himself once more 
on the shallows at the mouth of the brook where he 
was born. He went straight to the root under which 
he used to hide; but the familiar place was grown so 
small that his head would not go into it; and the eddy 
there that used to hold him securely was now of no 
consequence whatever. So he took to cruising leisurely 
around the tiny world that had once seemed to him so 
big and full of danger. Danger? why, this was a place 
of absolute peace compared with the dragon-haunted 
green forests under the sea. He was so big now that — 

A thrill tingled all through Kopseep as he darted 
aside, making the shallow water roll and bubble, and 



142 Northern Trails. Book II 

whirled and doubled madly, and flashed in and out of 
the startled river with a long, black, snaky wake dou- 
bling after him, as if it were his own shadow that he 
was trying to escape. Like a flash he rose and leaped 
back, a clear eight feet, over the shadow, which doubled 
swiftly and seized another grilse that was plowing fur- 
rows in a gravel nest. Out of the troubled waters slid 
first the head, then the long back and tail of an otter, 
which climbed the bank and stood mewing over her 
catch. Two more shadows glided into the river at her 
call, making our grilse jump and flash away and hide 
again ; but the new-comers were only two otter cubs that 
as yet had learned to catch only stupid chub and suck- 
ers. In a moment they were out on the bank, crouched 
with their long backs arched like frightened cats, nib- 
bling daintily at the salmon ; while Kopseep, forgetting 
all about them, roamed boldly over the shallows, look- 
ing for a little salmon to be his mate. 

He found her at last, preparing her nest just below 
the mouth of the brook, and began circling watchfully 
about her. Other grilse were numerous, and in search- 
ing for a mate they would enter his circle aggressively, 
as if it were a chip that Kopseep was carrying on his 
shoulder. Like a flash he would rush at them, lock jaws, 
and tug and push and bully them out of the circle. 
Then, when he returned, he had to bite and gouge and 
drive away the sea-trout — huge fellows, some of them, 




As if it were his own shadow that he was 
trying to escape " 



The Story of Kopseep 143 

as big as himself — that swarmed hungrily about, wait- 
ing for the feast of salmon eggs. 

It was late autumn; the banks were strangely still 
and white, and ice had formed over all the still pools 
when Kopseep turned down-stream again, leaving the 
eggs of his mate safely covered in the new nest. He 
was like a kelt, or black salmon, now, — that is, a dark 
fish that has grown thin and hungry from tarrying and 
fasting too long in fresh water. Down he went, through 
the rapids and over the falls, in a desperate hurry that 
made him speed faster than the swift river, which had 
seemed so wonderful on his first journey in the spring- 
time. In a single day's racing he covered the entire dis- 
tance, snapping up every little fish that crossed his swift 
path, and the next day found him back in his den in the 
rocky ridge under the ocean. This was the salmon's 
own foraging ground ; and among the multitudes that 
swarmed there Kopseep saw numerous fat young grilse, 
almost as big as himself; but he knew not that these 
were the same little sisters that he had met coming 
down, and that had changed rapidly from smolt to grilse 
while he was fighting his hard way up the river. 

The few rare fishermen who visit this part of the coast 
wonder why in this river — and indeed in many others 
— they catch only male grilse ; but the reason is probably 
a very simple one. The females pass the grilse state in 
the ocean, growing steadily until the following spring, 



144 Northern Trails. Book II 

when males and females enter the river together as fully 
developed salmon of eight or ten pounds' weight. 

All winter long our young grilse, famished by his long 
fasting, gorged himself and grew fat and doubled his 
weight. When the May moon drew near her full the 
migratory fever again ran along the rocky ridge under 
the ocean ; for even down there, in the cold green under- 
world, Nature comes with the same message that sets 
the buds to swelling and the birds to singing. The 
largest salmon felt it first and drifted away in a dense 
shoal, following up the delicate flavor of their own river 
as a dog follows an air scent, or else remembering, as a 
mule does, every turn and winding of the trail that has 
once been followed. A month later Kopseep, with hun- 
dreds of his fellows, moved leisurely away after them. 

He was a salmon now, and had to take his chances 
with the seals that watched on the point of rocks and 
that neglected all other fish when the first run of salmon 
came plunging in through the breakers. He had passed 
them safely, after a lively chase, and was playing and 
jumping hilariously in the pool at the head of the first 
lake, when a curious accident sent him hurrying back to 
the sea. And that was only the beginning of a long chain 
of causes which made him bigger than all his fellows. 

On the lake were a pair of loons that had a nest on a 
bog hard by, and that were always fishing. Hukweem 
was deep under water chasing a big trout, one day, 



The Story of Kopseep 145 

which darted into Kopseep's pool and vanished under a 
root. As Hukweem sped noiselessly by, trailing a great 
string of silver bubbles, the waving of a great tail caught 
his eye just beyond the root, and like a flash he plunged 
at it, driving his pointed bill deep into Kopseep's side. 
Had it been a big trout the blow would have stunned 
him on the spot ; but at the first touch the salmon tore 
himself free and leaped clear of the water. Hukweem 
passed on, seeing his mistake, and the next moment 
Kopseep was back in the pool, fanning the water quietly 
as if nothing whatever had happened. 

Since entering fresh water Kopseep's appetite had 
vanished ; but now it began suddenly to gnaw again. 
That was simply Nature's way of telling him to go back 
to the sea, where he might be healed. It was not the 
pain of his wound ; for, like other fish, he seemed to feel 
nothing of that kind. Had he stayed in the fresh water 
the parasites would speedily have fastened on the raw 
flesh and killed him ; but of that he knew nothing. He 
simply felt hungry, and remembered that in the sea there 
was food in abundance. Salmon fishermen have always 
noticed how wounded fish suddenly begin feeding. 
Sometimes when the wound is no more than the mark 
of a net, which has split a fin or brushed off a ring of 
scales around the head, the marked salmon will plunge 
at a fly more vigorously than any of his fellows in the 
pool, and will even take worms or a shiner, if your 



146 Northern Trails. Book II 

sportsmanship allow you to offer them. So Kopseep, 
feeling only the hunger, — which was Nature's simple 
direction, without her explanations, — turned swiftly 
back to the sea, and almost within the hour was rest- 
ing in his old den under the rocks again. 

Here he stayed all summer long. While other salmon 
moved off in successive shoals and battled their way up 
the river, Kopseep, whose migratory fever seemed to be 
cured by the thrust of a loon's bill, gave himself up to 
the unlimited abundance of the ocean, and discovered 
for himself, one day, a new and delicious food supply. 
It was late in the summer, after the caplin had passed 
by, and Kopseep, after his wont, was gliding in and out 
of the green forest arches and poking his hungry nose 
into every den among the rocks. In a little arched door- 
way with some waving green weeds for a curtain his 
nose touched something soft, which instantly shrank 
back closer to the sheltering rock. Kopseep pulled it 
out promptly and found a small lobster, which was hid- 
ing there waiting for its new shell to grow. A delicious 
taste, the most wonderful he had ever experienced, filled 
his mouth as he bolted the morsel. All excitement, after 
the manner of feeding fish, Kopseep put his nose into 
another den and found another lobster, a bigger one, that 
offered no resistance as he was dragged out and eaten. 

It was all so different from previous experience that 
the salmon knew not what to make of it. He had often 



The Story of Kopseep 147 

passed lobsters before, crawling slowly along the bottom 
on the tiptoes of their queer legs, or shooting backward 
like winks and hiding in the mud when frightened by a 
huge and hungry sea-bass. Their shells were too hard 
for Kopseep to think of cracking; and besides, each 
lobster carried two pairs of big ugly jaws in front of him 
as he yew-yawed along. These jaws were always wide 
open, — one pair armed with little teeth for catching and 
holding things, and the other with big teeth for crush- 
ing whatever was caught. So Kopseep had wisely let 
the lobsters alone, and had no idea that they were good 
to eat. Now, however, the hard shells had all split along 
the backs, and the lobsters left the shoal water and the 
fishermen's lobster-pots to seek out deep hidden caves 
among the rocks. There they crawled out of the old 
shells and lay very quiet in hiding, waiting for the new 
shells to grow hard enough to make it safe for them to 
venture into the world once more. 

It was at this very time, when the lobsters were most 
defenseless, that Kopseep found them. There were hun- 
dreds of them, from the size of your hand up to the big, 
shy fellow that would fill a basket, each one hidden away 
in his own den ; and Kopseep left all other game and 
took to lobster hunting. It was a tingling kind of sport, 
gliding noiselessly with every sense on the alert through 
the waving forests and over the rocks; for scores of 
hungry bandits — monstrous sea-bass and horse-mackerel 



148 Northern Trails. Book II 

and, worst of all, dogfish — had taken advantage of 
the new food supply and were lurking in every covert, 
ready to snap up the salmon and other fish that came 
hunting for lobsters. So Kopseep never knew, when 
he approached a den, whether he would find a tidbit for 
himself or an ogre to eat him up ; and his hunting was 
very much as if you were prowling among the woods 
and mountain caves, expecting game every moment, but 
not knowing whether you would find a rabbit that you 
wanted, or a big grizzly bear or a dragon that might 
want you. 

His method of hunting here never varied. He would 
glide among the waving green fronds, trying, as every 
other wild creature does, to see everything without him- 
self being seen, until he spied a little cave or den that 
might hide a soft-shelled lobster. Then he would settle 
down where the sea growth hid him and watch all the 
surroundings steadily. If nothing stirred, and if no sus- 
picious glint of bronze or silver scales flickered in the 
waving forest, he would glide up and peer into the den. 
If the lobster were there, and not too big, he dragged 
him out and ate him quickly ; but at the first suspicious 
glint or movement he would whirl like a flash, making 
the delicate seaweeds roll and quiver violently to hide 
his flight, and the next instant he was fifty feet away 
and hidden so cunningly that the big shark or sea-bass 
would drive straight over his head without seeing him. 



The Story of Kopseep 149 

Once, as he hunted in this way, he spied a queer cave 
in the rocks with gleaming white points reaching up 
from the bottom and down from the top, like stalactites 
and stalagmites, and with just room enough for him to 
swim in between them, — a perfect place, it looked, for 
a nice soft lobster to be hiding. Kopseep lay in the 
weeds and watched a few moments, then glided forward 
to enter. Just then something began to glow dull red 
over the cave; and in a flash Kopseep had whirled 
away, while the long weeds swayed and rolled and hid 
him as he darted aside. In a moment he was stealing 
back to watch the den from another hiding-place. Sud- 
denly the whole cave seemed to move and tremble. 
The white points above and below came slowly together, 
and there was no more an open doorway. Out from the 
rocks glided a queer monster of a mouth-fish, colored 
like the gray rocks, with dull red eyes and a head like a 
Chinese dragon. He looked around for a moment, backed 
into his lair, opened his huge mouth, — and there was 
the cave again, looking just like a den in the rocks. 
But Kopseep was not looking for any more lobsters in 
that neighborhood, and he was a wiser and more wary 
fish as he glided away on his solitary hunting. 

So the long summer passed by, and Kopseep grew 
daily larger with his comfortable and lazy living. When 
his brothers and sisters came down from the river they 
found him more than twice their size and a full twenty 



150 Northern Trails. Book II 

pounds in weight. By spring he had added five pounds 
more, and when the first shoal of big salmon moved 
riverward with the tides of full moon Kopseep was 
among them. For on this run, when the river is full and 
strong with the spring floods, only the largest fish are 
equal to the hard work of climbing the falls and rapids. 
So the years went by with little change in Kopseep's 
methods of living. Only he grew bigger and bigger, 
and his long summer in the sea had made him even 
more full of moods and whims than most salmon. Once, 
when a flood had blocked the river with logs, so that 
the salmon could neither swim under nor jump over the 
obstacle, he had gone down the coast with a few of his 
fellows and run up a new stream, contrary to the habits 
of all salmon, which in general run up only the rivers 
in which they are born. Another season, when he was 
heavier and lazier than usual, he had ascended the river 
only as far as the first rapids, just above tide-water. 
There, with a dozen unusually large fish, he spent a 
month playing idly and sleeping, as salmon often do. 
And when you hooked one of these big fellows he 
bolted headlong down the river, and either smashed 
your tackle, or, if you were quick enough to leap into 
your canoe — for they never stopped or sulked like 
other salmon — he took you swiftly out through the 
breakers, and you had the rare experience of playing 
a salmon in the open sea. 



The Story of Kopseep 151 

This year Kopseep has come up leisurely as far as the 
pool below the falls ; and this is as far as he will ever 
get, if our tackle holds and he still keeps on rising at 
pretty things that the current sweeps over him. See ! 
there he is, a monster salmon, plunging out of the white 
rips, just where we left him when we sat down by the 
river to hear his story. 

We have " rested " him long enough now, and have 
changed the number-six Jock Scott to a number-eight 
of the same kind; and all the while Kopseep is rising 
splendidly. A subtile excitement creeps over you as the 
long line shoots out from the springing tip, farther and 
farther, till it falls straight across the white turmoil 
below which the salmon is lying. Swiftly the leader 
swings down and straightens in the current ; the tiny 
fly whirls up and dances for an instant in the very spot 
where you saw Kopseep's rise. There ! a swift rush, the 
flash of heavy shoulders as he turns downward. Don't 
strike now, as you would a trout ; for the spring of your 
tip against the heavy plunge of that big fish will snap 
your leader as if it were made of cobweb. A ponderous 
surge at the end of your rod, a light pull to set the 
hook fast; then your heart jumps to your mouth and 
all your nerves thrill and tingle and shout hilariously 
as your reel screams at the first terrific rush. Out of 
the river springs a huge salmon, shooting up like a 



152 Northern Trails. Book II 

great jack-in-a-box, and tumbles in and jumps out again, 
here, there, everywhere at once, like a rooster with his 
head cut off. Away he goes, zzzzim-m-m-m ! leaping 
clear and throwing himself broadside across ten feet of 
white water, shaking his head like a dog with a wood- 
chuck; and then a headlong rush and tumble down 
the first rapids with the reel screaming shrill defiance 
after him at every plunge. 

Noel has started to his feet at the first rush and 
reaches instinctively for the long gaff. " Py cosh ! oh, 
py cosh, beeg one ! " he says, staring open-mouthed at 
the torrent, not knowing where Kopseep will come up 
next. Then he settles back and fills his pipe, knowing 
well that a half-hour of delicate, skillful work must 
follow before you will get any glimpse of the big fish 
other than what he chooses to give you by leaping clear 
of the water, trying to strike the line with his tail, or to 
shake himself free of the tormenting little thing that 
plucks him by the jaw and that holds on spite of all 
his shaking and jumping. 

He is down in the pool below now, resting for an 
instant in the eddy under a big rock. Three fourths of 
your line is already out of the reel, and if he makes 
another rush down-stream you must lose him. Down 
you go, lively! Scrambling over the rocks, floundering 
through the water, slipping, sliding, stumbling, down 
you go; all the while with your rod up and bent to 



The Story of Kopseep 153 

keep a strain on the fish, and with the reel singing 
its rhythmic ztim, zum, zum, as you hurriedly gather 
in the line. 

Get below your salmon now, and stay below him if 
you possibly can ; for then he will have to fight against 
the current as well as against the spring of your rod. 
As you carry out the cunning maneuver Kopseep starts 
off in another series of wild leaps and rushes, swings 
wide across the river, and again darts below you. He 
lies quiet in one deep spot where the pull of your rod 
will just balance the push of the current. The line 
stands straight up, humming steadily, while a spurt 
of white water curls up beside it. All the while you 
feel a steady succession of harsh tugs and jerks that 
threaten every instant to part your tackle. 

Kopseep is jigging; and that means that he is hooked 
— and probably lightly — in the lip, rather than in the 
mouth or tongue ; and that you must be extra careful if 
you expect to get him. Could you see him now, you 
would find that he is standing fair on his head in the 
current, darting his jaw with rapid jerks against the 
bottom, trying to scrape off your fly or to break your 
leader against the stones. Ten minutes pass slowly, and 
though you are below him, pulling his head sidewise as 
hard as you dare, you have not budged him an inch. 
Then Noel appears, gliding in and out like a shadow 
among the trees on the bank. 



154 Northern Trails. Book II 

" Some stones, Noel — big ones," you call to him ; and 
the Indian begins to hurl stones at the spot where Kop- 
seep is sulking. A lucky one starts him at last and he is 
off like a flash, rushing and jumping all over the pool; 
while you endeavor desperately to reel in the bagging 
line and to keep Kopseep out of the strong rush of 
water against the farther bank. Spite of you he surges 
into it ; then, feeling the full power of the flood, he starts 
straight down like an express train for the distant sea. 
After him you go, splashing like a startled moose 
through the pools, jumping the rocks like a goat, down, 
down through the rapids, with a heavy side pull — for 
you are getting desperate — at every turn of the river, 
till with a sigh of immense satisfaction you lead him out 
of the current into a still, deep reach of the river. And 
here the fight begins all over again. 

Up to the present moment every chance in the un- 
equal struggle was in the salmon's favor; but now you 
venture a wee, small hope that you may get him. Down 
below are some heavy rapids where you can neither 
follow nor hold your fish ; so for half an hour you coax 
and humor and bully him, letting him have his own way 
when he is heading where you want him to go, but strain- 
ing your light tackle to the breaking point to turn him 
away from the rapids. Then a great silver side rolls up 
heavily for an instant, showing that he is weary enough to 
be led, and you begin cautiously to reel him in to the bank. 



The Story of Kopseep 155 

Noel has disappeared, thinking, of course, that you 
lost your fish in the second desperate run through the 
rapids. You are half glad, for now you have a chance to 
land a salmon in the most sportsmanlike way of all, by 
beaching him yourself without help from the big gaff. 
There is only one possible spot hereabouts for so deli- 
cate a landing, — a little shingly beach where the bank 
shelves gently into the river. If you can lead him there 
on his side, at the first touch of the bottom he will flap 
his tail and kick himself out on land, aided by the gentle 
pull of your line. Just below the spot a broken stub 
leans far out, only two or three feet, above the water. 
That is the danger point ; but you must either risk it or 
shout for Noel, and you are glad, thinking of Kopseep, 
to give him the one small chance. 

Now you avoid the beginner's eagerness and the mis- 
take of being in too much of a hurry, and play your 
salmon till he rolls up on his side and lies there fanning 
the water; then gently, very gently, you lead him towards 
the shingle. He is almost yours; you could gaff him 
yourself as he swings past you, and your nerves tingle 
as you see how big he is. But at the first touch of the 
stones a new strength quivers suddenly in Kopseep. He 
turns on his belly, surges heavily down-stream, and spite 
of the straining rod passes slowly, powerfully under the 
leaning stub. You drop your rod instantly to the hori- 
zontal, so that your leader will not touch the wood, and 



156 Northern Trails. Book II 

draw him out towards the middle of the river. Again he 
rolls up on his side exhausted, and lies for a moment 
just below the stub. His eyes see it dimly, and with a 
last mighty effort he turns and leaps clear over it up- 
stream. The line doubles around the log; he falls with 
all his weight on the taut leader ; there is a heavy splash. 
Then the salmon is lying free in the shallows; the fly 
swings loose under the leaning stub with a tiny white 
bit of Kopseep's lip glistening on the barb. 

On the instant you have dropped your rod, and all 
the sportsman's calm vanishes in the fisherman's eager- 
ness as you jump forward to grab him. Your hands grip 
his broad back; but his slippery sides seem to ooze out 
between your fingers as he rolls away. A swift plunge 
as he sees his big enemy; then a broad tail waves 
triumphantly over the flood and the salmon vanishes 
into the deeps. 

Good-by, Kopseep, and good luck ! You 're the biggest 
fish I have seen all summer, and of course you got away. 
Up at Kopswaugan the salmon are still rising; but I 
have no more heart for the little nine-pounders. Till 
next summer then, when I shall look for you again 
in the same place under the falls. Meanwhile, may the 
bear and the seal and the shark and the net always miss 
you. The fisherman has no regrets that your story is 
not yet ended. 



GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES 

Cheokhes, che-ok-hes', the mink. 

Cheplahgan, chep-ldh'gan, the bald eagle. 

Ch'geegee-lokh-sis, ch" 1 gee-gee' 'lock-sis, the chickadee. 

Chigwooltz, chig-wooltz' ', the bullfrog. 

Clote Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indians. 

Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc. 
Commoosie, com-moo-sie' ', a little shelter, or hut, of boughs and bark. 
Deedeeaskh, dee-dee'ask, the blue jay. 
Eleemos, el-ee'mos, the fox. 
Hawahak, hd-wd-hak' ', the hawk. 
Hetokh, hefokh, the deer. 

Hukweem, huk-weein' ', the great northern diver, or loon. 
Ismaques, iss-md-qnes' ', the fish-hawk. 
Kagax, kdg'dx, the weasel. 
Kakagos, kd-kd-gos' ' , the raven. 
K'dunk, k'du?ik', the toad. 
Keeokuskh, kee-o-kusk' ', the muskrat. 
Keeonekh, kee'o-nek, the otter. 

Keesuolukh, kee-su-o'luk, the Great Mystery, i.e. God. 
Killooleet, kil'loo-leet, the white-throated sparrow. 
Kookooskoos, koo-koo-skoos' , the great horned owl. 
Kopseep, koft'seep, the salmon. 
Koskomenos, kos'kdm-e-?ids', the kingfisher. 
Kupkawis, cup-ka'wis, the barred owl. 
Kwaseekho, kwd-seek'ho, the sheldrake. 
Lhoks, locks, the panther. 
Malsun, mal'stm, the wolf. 
Malsunsis, mtil-sun'sis, the little wolf cub. 
Matwock, mat' wok, the white bear. 
Meeko, meek'o, the red squirrel. 

157 



158 Northern Trails. Book II 

Megaleep, meg'd-leep, the caribou. 

Milicete, mil'i-cete, the name of an Indian tribe ; written also Malicete. 

Mitchegeesookh, mitch-e-gee'sook, the snowstorm. 

Mitches, mit'ches, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse. 

Moktaques, mok-td'ques, the hare. 

Mooween, moo-ween', the black bear. 

Mooweesuk, moo-wee' suk, the coon. 

Musquash, mus' quash, the muskrat. 

Nemox, nem'ox, the fisher. 

Pekompf , pe-kompf, the wildcat. 

Pekquam, pek-wam', the fisher. 

Queokh, que' ok, the sea-gull. 

Quoskh, qtioskh, the blue heron. 

Seksagadagee, sek'sa-ga-da'gee, the Canada grouse, or spruce partridge. 

Skooktum, skook'tum, the trout. 

Tookhees, tok'hees, the wood-mouse. 

Umquenawis, um-que-nd'wis, the moose. 

Unk Wunk, unk' wunk, the porcupine. 

Upweekis, up-week'iss, the Canada lynx. 

Waptonk, wap-tonk', the wild goose. 

Wayeesis, way-ee'sis, the white wolf, the strong one. 

Whitooweek, whit-oo-week', the woodcock. 



JUL 141308 



